A New Deal or A New Dealer?
"Drill, baby, drill" is kind of fun to chant, I suppose, but does it really make any sense? Bruce Ramsey seems to think so.
His Seattle Times column today so exemplifies the tortured logic behind drilling that I want to spend a few minutes refuting it. Not to pick on Ramsey, but to point out what's wrong with the idea.
Early on in the piece Ramsey allows this:
It is said, for example, that drilling won't produce enough oil to give Americans energy independence, or to arrest the decline in U.S. production, or to produce any new oil for several years. All of which are probably true.
Wait, what? That's all true? To his credit, Ramsey's trying to take a clear-eyed approach to problem. He's being honest.
So let's get this straight: even drilling supporters agree that it won't provide energy independence, meaningfully improve our production, or even give us any at all energy for "several" years (aka "many" years).
I don't know about you, but those seem like pretty big strikes to me. Especially in light of these two facts:
- The Pacific Northwest is hemorraghing $61 million each day on oil and gas. Every penny of that leaves the region to pay for what Ramsey later admits is an addiction.
- "North Pole Ever Closer To Having No Ice" -- that's a headline in Ramsey's cross-town newspaper rival, the P-I. And it's no joke. Fossil fuel combustion is fundamentally -- and quickly -- changing the very nature of the earth.
Just so everyone's perfectly clear, the reason not to drill is because it prolongs our addiction to oil. And that addiction is 1) bankrupting us; and 2) destroying the planet.
Apart from that, more drilling is a fine idea.
