Everyone (even the president) talks about America's "addiction to oil," and this recent debate over offshore drilling has made me think that the addiction analogy is a useful way to think through the issues.
Republicans want to drill offshore and in other new areas (such as Alaska) because they think it's a quick and easy way to reduce gas prices. I'm somewhat sympathetic to this view: More supply will lower prices, and it is clear that many Americans are hurting terribly because of the higher costs of not only gas but all the goods and services that come from the burning of fossil fuels in our economy — basically, everything else. Yes, the higher price of gas is reducing consumption, just like a gas tax (remember the discussion of that in 2004?), which means less carbon emissions and less global warming, but the pacing is the problem: Everything is happening way too suddenly. The sharp rise in prices has blindsided Americans, especially those of fewer means, and these are households that are teetering on the edge to begin with, and can't absorb the one-two punch of higher gas and food costs.
Democrats argue that drilling offshore will cause serious, irreparable harm to the environment, and may not even help lower gas prices that much, if at all, given what a small amount of oil can feasibly be pumped from the bottom of the sea, relative to Middle Eastern sources. All offshore drilling leads to oil waste being pumped into the sea, not to mention a risk of disastrous oil spills during transport, and so the damage that this kind of drilling can cause to oceans and seashores (and, more pragmatically, to the tourism industry) is very real.
But the most persuasive argument to me is that more drilling simply delays the solution to the problem. The solution is clear to everyone, I think: We need to develop non-polluting, renewable sources of energy. By drilling, we divert limited economic and political resources toward propping up an industry that eventually must be phased out. Every investment dollar that goes into the oil industry is a dollar not going to green energy.
It's like a drug addict, who knows she has to quit, but keeps finding new reasons to shoot up. The solution is to stop using. The effects of using are clearly bad, and every time she gives into temptation, she makes the situation worse, and the addiction harder to break. Likewise, by continuing to give into our oil addiction, we're making global warming and our Middle Eastern dependency worse, and moving further away from our goal of abstinence.
It's a bit ironic that the Democrats are the ones who advocate quitting cold turkey this time, while the Republicans want "just one more taste."
If we really do need just "one more taste" to tide over our struggling families, then we might as well use the oil sources that have already been tapped — diverting some of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and recycling existing oilfields. It's sort of like using the drugs stashed under your mattress rather than heading into the city to re-up. (Not that I have any experience in these things.) It's still bad behavior, but at least you don't have to go too far.
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