More on Drilling
Seems to be environmental politics week at this blog. Ah, well. A few more thoughts regarding the sudden interest by Republicans in drilling our way out of this energy mess.
I heard a wonderful comment on the radio yesterday, right after hearing the President blame Democrats for not being responsive to his sudden call to open up basically every available place to drilling. The speaker pointed out that this assertion of blame seems quite ironic given the fact that for six years the Republicans had majorities in the Senate and the House and held the executive branch… and apparently didn’t think it was enough of a good idea then to do anything at all about it. And now all of a sudden it is a great idea?
And, along those lines, does anyone else smell an election year set-up here? Republicans trying to get some traction on some issue (any issue!?) against the Democrats seem to have stumbled on this as perhaps a way to fool the public into thinking that the Democrats somehow are not concerned with the plight of the “average person.”
Never mind the fact that if we opened every square inch of US territory to drilling today it would be years before we would see any oil from this. And that the oil reserves are generally rather small. And that the oil companies are already not using all of the drilling sites currently available to them.
Oh, and there is that little matter of global warming. Let’s imagine for a moment that we somehow could find enough oil in US territory to return to the “good old days” of cheap gas and SUVs… has it occurred to anyone that we’d have to reduce consumption and look for alternative energy sources anyway in order to deal with that pressing problem?
I don’t buy this sudden call for more drilling one little bit. It is short sighted, won’t solve the problem, will make other problems worse, and is probably just being raised as an election year wedge issue in any case.
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June 19, 2008 -
Posted by gdanmitchell |
Commentary, Environment
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More on Drilling
Seems to be environmental politics week at this blog. Ah, well. A few more thoughts regarding the sudden interest by Republicans in drilling our way out of this energy mess.
I heard a wonderful comment on the radio yesterday, right after hearing the President blame Democrats for not being responsive to his sudden call to open up basically every available place to drilling. The speaker pointed out that this assertion of blame seems quite ironic given the fact that for six years the Republicans had majorities in the Senate and the House and held the executive branch… and apparently didn’t think it was enough of a good idea then to do anything at all about it. And now all of a sudden it is a great idea?
And, along those lines, does anyone else smell an election year set-up here? Republicans trying to get some traction on some issue (any issue!?) against the Democrats seem to have stumbled on this as perhaps a way to fool the public into thinking that the Democrats somehow are not concerned with the plight of the “average person.”
Never mind the fact that if we opened every square inch of US territory to drilling today it would be years before we would see any oil from this. And that the oil reserves are generally rather small. And that the oil companies are already not using all of the drilling sites currently available to them.
Oh, and there is that little matter of global warming. Let’s imagine for a moment that we somehow could find enough oil in US territory to return to the “good old days” of cheap gas and SUVs… has it occurred to anyone that we’d have to reduce consumption and look for alternative energy sources anyway in order to deal with that pressing problem?
I don’t buy this sudden call for more drilling one little bit. It is short sighted, won’t solve the problem, will make other problems worse, and is probably just being raised as an election year wedge issue in any case.
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June 19, 2008 - Posted by gdanmitchell | Commentary, Environment