Diary of a Mad Voter: Joan McCarter

Got Fossil Fuels?

By Joan McCarter, 7-11-08

The Billings Gazette has been running a poll on their front page this week, asking “How high do gas prices need to go before you make significant changes in your driving habits?” At last check, a whopping 78% of button clickers in this decidedly non-scientific poll say they have already changed their driving habits.

In the confines of that little box on the front page of the online paper, you can’t drill down to exactly what habits have changed. Are people doing little things like making sure tires are properly inflated and driving 55 (I’ll admit freely, that one is the hardest for me), and reducing and combining trips to conserve or are they going whole hog and trading in their Suburbans for Priuses or using biodiesel in their pickups. Wherever they fall along the spectrum of conservation, it’s at least encouraging that 78 percent of Gazette readers are doing their part. What’s less heartening is the probability that they are doing so because they just can’t afford not to.

For those of us of a certain age, there’s a real feeling a deja vu this week. Between the president’s illegal wiretapping of Americans and skyrocketing gas prices, it’s like living in the early 1970s all over again. Back in the 1970s, Congress responded to the first challenge by curtailing the president’s powers and protecting our civil liberties. I guess that idea went out along with wood paneling, avocado green appliances, and bell bottoms as far as the current Congress is concerned. Let’s see if they can do any better this time around with our energy crisis.

With oil prices hitting another new record today, to $147 a barrel, it’s safe to say we’ll never see that once unfathomable $100 a barrel ever again. That brings the inevitable cries from the “drain every last drop” crowd that we have to open up the Arctic Refuge and we have to start drilling offshore. All this despite the fact, as one of my Daily Kos colleagues has pointed out:

• Oil companies already hold over 7,000 leases for offshore drilling that stretch over 68 million acres.
• US Oil Production peaked in 1974 and no amount of drilling will reverse that trend or eliminate imports of oil.
• Drilling close to US shores has been the source of environmental disaster and that drilling the areas proposed this time threatens both scenic and environmentally sensitive areas.
• Drilling offshore and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge won’t affect oil prices at all in the short term, and will have very little impact in the long term.

Ah, talk about inconvenient truths. One of our Congressional leaders, Nancy Pelosi--the one who decided we didn’t really need civil liberties so much--has at least been willing to call the push for more drilling in environmentally sensitive areas what it is, a hoax “This call for drilling in areas that are protected is a hoax, it’s an absolute hoax on the part of the Republicans and this administration” Pelosi said at her weekly press conference. “It’s a decoy to punt your attention away from the fact that their policies have produced $4-a-gallon gasoline.”

The plan put forward by the Democrats thus far to counter the push for more drilling sites is actually pretty sensible. It goes back to that point about the oil companies already holding those more than 7,000 unused leases. They’re calling it Use It or Lose It:

The 68 million acres of leased but inactive federal land have the potential to produce an additional 4.8 million barrels of oil and 44.7 billion cubic feet of natural gas each day.  This would nearly double total U.S. oil production, and increase natural gas production by 75 percent.  It would also cut U.S. oil imports by more than one-third, reducing America’s dependency on foreign oil.

The Rahall bill would force oil and gas companies to either produce or give up federal onshore and offshore leases they are stockpiling by barring the companies from obtaining any more leases unless they can demonstrate that they are producing oil and gas, or are diligently developing the leases they already hold, during the initial term of the leases.

Congressional Republicans counter this argument by saying the proposal ignores the reality that it often takes years of prospecting to determine where accessible fossil fuel reserves exist. To which there’s a simple answer--the same holds true for all those new sites they want to get their grubby hands on. Let’s call this what it is, another attempt to use a crisis for another massive land grab for big oil. Kind of like the Iraq war.

Which again turns my thoughts back to the 1970s and another unpopular president who, nonetheless, had a pretty good plan.

The first principle is that we can have an effective and comprehensive energy policy only if the government takes responsibility for it and if the people understand the seriousness of the challenge and are willing to make sacrifices.

The second principle is that healthy economic growth must continue. Only by saving energy can we maintain our standard of living and keep our people at work. An effective conservation program will create hundreds of thousands of new jobs.

The third principle is that we must protect the environment. Our energy problems have the same cause as our environmental problems—wasteful use of resources. Conservation helps us solve both at once.

The fourth principle is that we must reduce our vulnerability to potentially devastating embargoes. We can protect ourselves from uncertain supplies by reducing our demand for oil, making the most of our abundant resources such as coal, and developing a strategic petroleum reserve.

The fifth principle is that we must be fair. Our solutions must ask equal sacrifices from every region, every class of people, every interest group. Industry will have to do its part to conserve, just as the consumers will. The energy producers deserve fair treatment, but we will not let the oil companies profiteer.

The sixth principle, and the cornerstone of our policy, is to reduce the demand through conservation. Our emphasis on conservation is a clear difference between this plan and others which merely encouraged crash production efforts. Conservation is the quickest, cheapest, most practical source of energy. Conservation is the only way we can buy a barrel of oil for a few dollars. It costs about $13 to waste it.

The seventh principle is that prices should generally reflect the true replacement costs of energy. We are only cheating ourselves if we make energy artificially cheap and use more than we can really afford.

The eighth principle is that government policies must be predictable and certain. Both consumers and producers need policies they can count on so they can plan ahead. This is one reason I am working with the Congress to create a new Department of Energy, to replace more than 50 different agencies that now have some control over energy.

The ninth principle is that we must conserve the fuels that are scarcest and make the most of those that are more plentiful. We can’t continue to use oil and gas for 75 percent of our consumption when they make up seven percent of our domestic reserves. We need to shift to plentiful coal while taking care to protect the environment, and to apply stricter safety standards to nuclear energy.

The tenth principle is that we must start now to develop the new, unconventional sources of energy we will rely on in the next century.

It all sounds so sensible now. Just think, where would be now if we listened to Jimmy Carter then? We might still be facing nearly $150/barrel oil, but chances are it wouldn’t be so devastating to our economy. Food for thought in the silly season of the summer before an election.

Editor’s note: Joan McCarter’s weekly blogs are part of NewWest.Net/Politics’ “Diary of a Mad Voter” feature, a group blog, published in partnership with the Denver Post’s Politics West intended give a glimpse into the hearts and minds of several independent-minded voters and thinkers in the Rocky Mountain West in the ‘08 election cycle. For more columns check in with www.newwest.net/madvoter. And for more information on each of the bloggers, click here.

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