George Will pretty much eviscerates current GOP policies, continuing his maverick (or, many would say, sincerely disgruntled true conservative) diversion from party talking points. (Thanks to Tootle for the heads up on the link.) While I appreciate Will's sentiment, his solution is a tired stopgap, and not a long-range palliative. he also presents it in a hamhanded and, frankly, silly manner:
A modest proposal: Among the federal entitlement programs is the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which gives states block grants to help pay energy bills, and for weatherization and other energy-related home repairs. Congress should amend that law to say: No such funds shall be spent in any congressional district or state that elects a representative or senator who votes against drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, or in currently closed portions of the Outer Continental Shelf.
Forget for one moment the practicability of punishing select constituents because of the votes of their representatives. It seems to me that drilling in Alaska and elsewhere is a stopgap. It is a temporary paliative. It is not a long-range soluition. Most of the data that I have read indicates that the production we would get from Alaska and the shelf sounds more impressive than the actual impact it would have. And ultimately, it would perpatuate oile dependance. Unless we can become wholly self -sufficient with those reserves, isn't the problem still going to be that we need oil from the Middle East and elsewhere?
This is where Cliff May's more far-reaching thinking comes in. In "Break the Oil Monopoly" May engages in what among most of what passes for conservatism today amounts to apostasy:
A hundred years ago, Americans could use typewriters, the telegraph and primitive telephones. Today, Americans have computers, the Internet, cell phones, satellite television and radio, DVDs, iPods, email and instant messaging.
A hundred years ago, Americans could have personal vehicles powered by internal combustion engines running on gasoline. Today, Americans can have personal vehicles powered by internal combustion engines running on gasoline.
You see the problem?
For a long time, oil products have enjoyed a monopoly because oil has been cheap and easy. But it's getting less cheap and Americans ought to be growing uneasy about sending billions of dollars to corners of the Earth where terrorism is both preached and practiced.
The whole thing is worth reading, as May calls for a "new Manhattan project" and consciously aligns himself with a think tank, Set America Free, "which former CIA director James Woolsey calls 'a coalition of tree huggers, do-gooders, sodbusters, hawks, and evangelicals.'"
And once we consider options beyond how to fuel automobiles, planes, and the like, shouldn't we also be considering growing viable alternatives such as solar, water, and air-power? These are not new ideas, to be sure, but they are old ideas that critics have long derided or ignored. Can we honestly afford to do so anymore? Economically we do not want to. Geopolitically and strategically we cannot.
4 comments:
I guess the thing that really eats away at me is the fact that I have no choice in the matter. If I do not wish to pay for telephone or cable TV service, I could just cancel it. The reality of the situation is I have no choice when it comes to energy. I have to run my refrigerator; I have to get to work; I have to heat my house in the winter. Facing a 72% price increase in Maryland this summer, there will be not much cooling going on.
Being told to "suck it up" and be thankful that fuel prices are not any higher just is not constructive.
I do not pretend to have the answers, but look at from the oil company's perspective: higher oil prices, shrinking supply, higher profits. There is no incentive to do anything to lower prices. Someone please tell me that I am missing something there. They keep their profits down by paying large dividends and huge executive bonuses, but that is another topic.
Just as some municipalities are installing wireless internet in their communities to make it affordable, maybe the time has come for states or local governments to offer there own power generation again.
Wait a minute....Isn't that where we started? ;)
I think you hit the frustration that many are feeling on the head. Here in Texas prices are just insane. Last winter, I left the country for six weeks, turned everything off, and came back to more than $400 worth of electricity bills. I have had bills of more than $200 at least 6-7 times in the last year, and I almost never am home. And my options are minimal. There are two companies, one more expensive than the next, and to be blunt, their customer service sucks -- why would it be any good? I have no other options. They know that. And unlike in some states, where regulations prevent the electric company from just shutting off someone's electricity, they have no qualms here in Texas.
I find it interesting that Ronald reagan could fire ait traffic controllers, arguing that they served a vital public service, and yet no one feels even remotely compelled to tell the oil companies to suck it up, cut their profits, and serve the greater good. Without air traffic controllers people do not fly. Without oil, people die. i do not think that oil dependancy is a good thing, but for now that is the reality -- as long as that is the case, shouldn't there be an element of the greater good attached?
I honestly cannot fathom what iot must be like for people on really tight budgets.
dcat
Excellent post and you've hit on one of the most interesting topics to me in recent years (as dcat knows since we talk about this all the time in email). I drive 90 miles to and from work each day. I bought a new car about a year ago and while I didn't get the most fuel efficient car, I did get one that was pretty good (35 mpg on the highway) so I fill up on average once a week. I have vowed not to complain about higher gas prices because I find myself in the fortunate situation of having a job that pays well enough that dropping an extra $50 or $100 a month on gas really isn't a big deal for me. But it bugs me because I know what it's like to live paycheck to paycheck and I know many, many more Americans live this way than the way I do now where $50-100 isn't a big deal and I think Bush, the oil people and politicians in general have done what I've vowed never to do which is to forget what it's like to live this way. It's the same thinking that led to a lot of the problems with Katrina. These people are so out touch that they said "everyone should leave" without realizing that there are people that just don't have the means to leave. It infuriates me to think of the hardships that this is causing people.
There are so many issues to deal with in this, it isn't funny. But to me, only one thing is going to enact real change in this area and that's the president (Bush or whoever comes next) holding to a real commitment to force change and to force things to happen. It needs to be fixed because it's going to cost people too much money, it's too costly to the environment and it's giving too much money to people that are going to turn around and harm us. I had a brief hope when Bush gave his state of the union and gave timelines for when certain things should be done. But I haven't seen any real change. Someone needs to say "by 20XX all cars will have a minimun mpg rating of X, by this date, we'll all be running on E85" or something like that.
While I agree with you guys that it would be nice for oil companies to cut their profits a bit and help consumers out, I think enduring this might be the only way to enact change--unfortunately that is going to hurt a lot of lower class families pretty hard. But when prices spiked after Katrina, we saw massive decreases in the number of SUVs bought and we saw increases in carpooling and public transportation, but then the price came back down to $2 and all those things disappeared. We need to hit the breaking point where people say "enough is enough" and start looking for alternate ways to conserve fuel themselves. I read recently that if every American cut down on the amount of oil they use by 3% the world oil market would crash. I can kind of understand why there is a resistance to solar or wind power--it's still so far away from giving real amounts of energy. I can also understand why the hybrid hasn't caught on--you may save on gas with a hybrid, but they are more expensive to buy and much more expensive to fix and in the end, you don't actually save any money and you probably have more headaches from maintenance. What I can't understand is how biodiesel and E85 technology are ready for prime time, but no money is put into these things by the government to get them over the humps needed to make them available to everyone. If you want to make America safer, but a few billion dollars towards making E85 readily available rather than a war, drastically cutting the amount of money we spend for oil that goes in some cases directly to people funding terrorism.
The TS makes good points. One of the issues is what the gas tax ought to be. I'd be all for a higher gas tax if there were a way not to make it a regressive tax, or if a gas tax could make home heating bills drop, or whatever. And certainly better political leadership -- we can dump on the GOP now, we may dump on the Dems in 2009 -- would be nice.
dcat
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