After a well-deserved summer break (because if I'm the one taking the break it's always well-deserved) I'm back!
President George W. Bush planned to lift a ban on oil exploration in the Outer Continental Shelf on Monday as part of an effort to ease record high oil prices, the White House said.
"States are going to be able to make decisions for themselves as to whether or not they want to do more offshore oil exploration off their shores, and how far out that would be, and what the revenue sharing would be when it comes to that," Perino said.
I've written before why this is a bad idea:
[a] 2007 Department of Energy study found that access to coastal energy deposits would not add to domestic crude oil and natural gas production before 2030 and that the impact on prices would be “insignificant.”
We have to wonder whether this is the best possible expenditure of time and effort. Do we really want to risk the environmental harm associated with offshore drilling for relief that won't come for more than two decades down the road? We can accomplish so many other things in terms of developing alternative energy sources between now and then. We can do more to reduce our dependency on oil - foreign or domestic - if we raise the CAFE standards and we continue to provide tax incentives for hybrid and other similar vehicles.
I won't go into greater detail because it's pretty self-explanatory: this won't help us today, it won't help us any time soon, and it will help us very little when it finally happens.
Those are the facts.
The politics of it, however are pretty different though. Right now, Arbusto looks like he's doing something "for the little guy." In politics, the appearance of action is sometimes more important than actually accomplishing something, so he's got some brownie points coming to him.
How does this help McCain? Well, if the Democrats in Congress don't lift the ban - and judging by the way they promptly rolled over on FISA, that's a big if - the Democrats are the bad guys who stand in the way of helping Americans reclaim their G-d-given right to cheap oil.
What should the Democrats do?
The Democrats should lift the ban.
There, I said it.
After all, two can play that political game. If the Democrats agree to lift the ban, they should do so as a "triple dog dare ya" to Bush and the Republicans. By doing that, the Democrats can first, point to the still-rising or not-dropping oil prices through the rest of the summer and fall and, second, can put on the defensive all the governors on those states where offshore drilling could take place, like Arnold in California, Crist in Florida, and Jindal in Louisiana. Lets see what decision they make if it's up to them to open up their waters to offshore drilling.
It could be the gift-that-keeps-on-giving for the Democrats. They get to prove their point, they get to hammer away at McCain and the Republicans on that issue, and they put a lot of Republican Governors on the spot.
