"Drill, baby, drill.” The chant that rang to the rafters of the Republican National Convention two weeks ago signaled even more that John McCain and the Republicans have abandoned reality in America’s energy crisis. It is pure fantasy to suggest we can drill our way out of the hole we have dug for ourselves. Any truly effective approach to the problem must, like Barack Obama’s plan, make its centerpiece breaking our addiction to oil, not winning cheap political points.
The “drill here, drill now” argument has gained its political legs through sheer simplicity: The price of Middle Eastern oil is high, so let’s get our own. As with most simplistic solutions, however, this one is not only too good to be true, but reckless.
The necessary exploration, permitting and drilling would make it 10 years before the first drop of oil from our coastlines made it to our gas pumps. Not only that, there is simply not enough oil in the country or its coasts to have any effect on energy prices. According to the Energy Information Administration, the United States consumes 20.1 million barrels of oil a day and rising. While the estimated 21 billion barrels available in oil fields across the country sounds appealing, at the current rate of consumption, it would last us less than 1,044 days. Nothing we produce domestically could have any sustainable impact on today’s, tomorrow’s or next year’s high prices.
So what cheer, then, should we offer to the crowds ravenous for an answer? Unfortunately, good answers cannot always be boiled down to three little words. We need a comprehensive plan to provide short term relief for struggling American families and long-term goals to reduce our fossil-fuel consumption, invest in renewable technologies, build a “green-collar” economy and reduce our carbon footprint. To tackle the energy problem, it is the specifics of the two candidates’ plans we must compare.
Barack Obama would first provide relief to working families by enacting a windfall profits tax on oil companies — which have recently posted the highest profits ever recorded — in order to give American families a $1,000 “Emergency Energy Rebate.” John McCain’s answer was a vacation from the gas tax this summer — a proposal that would save consumers little and benefit oil companies even more.
Second, Senator Obama would increase the Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency standards by four percent per year. If every vehicle in America ran on 40 miles per gallon, we would not need to import a drop of foreign oil. Under Obama’s plan, that standard would be surpassed by 2025. McCain has set no concrete goals for raising fuel efficiency or biofuel development, his Web site saying simply they “are showing great potential.”
Third, as the nation responsible for 25 percent of the world’s carbon emissions, Obama’s plan tackles our environmental responsibilities by enacting a tough cap-and-trade system for carbon dioxide emissions to reduce our current emissions by 80 percent by 2050, with a 100 percent auction of emissions credits. McCain’s plan would give these credits to polluters for free, and would achieve only a 65 percent reduction, below the level scientists recommend if we are to succeed in the fight against global warming. It’s no wonder that Obama has earned an 86 percent lifetime rating from the League of Conservation Voters, compared with McCain’s 24 percent.
The crises at hand — from energy prices to global warming — necessitate swift action and new ideas on a wide array of issues; not political tricks. The country deserves a president with an energy policy that addresses the necessities of the next 50 years, not just the next two months. That president is Barack Obama.
Sarah Buckley is president of University Democrats.
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