Peter Lehner's Blog
Dear President Bush: No More Offshore Drilling
June 18, 2008
Posted by Peter Lehner in Green Enterprise , Moving Beyond Oil , Reviving the World's Oceans , Solving Global Warming
Earlier today, President Bush called upon Congress to lift a ban on offshore oil drilling that was enacted more than 25 years ago. Since then, every President has extended the moratorium – first by President Bush’s father, in 1990, and then by President Clinton, in 1998.They extended the ban for good reason. Offshore drilling is an enormously wasteful and dangerous means of energy production. Between 1980 and 1999, 73 offshore oil spills dumped millions of gallons of oil into our waters. Offshore drilling is associated with air pollution and land degradation, and with seismic activity that has been shown to have profound, even fatal, effects on marine mammals.
Nor will it do anything to reduce the price of gas or increase our energy independence, as my colleague Deron Lovaas said today. According to most estimates, it will take at least seven to ten years for the oil to go into production and even then it wouldn’t reduce energy prices.
And so what is this about? With oil hitting $130 a barrel, these are desperate times for the White House. For a former oil-man from Texas, the solution to an oil crisis means helping the oil industry, not the American public. As Ross Gelbspan said in his book Boiling Point, “Today, the White House has become the East Coast branch office of ExxonMobil and Peabody coal, and climate change has become the preeminent case study of the contamination of our political system by money.”
So let’s recognize President’s call to Congress for what it is: a political play for short-term gain that will do little to reduce gas prices over the short or the long-term. What this country needs is a plan to reduce our energy consumption. It doesn’t need another desperate move to help the oil industry.
NRDC has a plan. Solving the energy crisis should begin with energy efficiency. We need to improve the energy efficiency of our vehicles, our businesses and our homes. The cheapest, cleanest and quickest energy we can produce is the energy we save through efficiency.
In the short-term, energy efficiency can be achieved much more quickly than drilling for oil. In the long-term, it can reduce consumption, ease demand, and help to lower the price of fuel.
To get there:
- We need to put a cap on carbon. The science is in; we can’t continue emitting at current rates.
- We need to unleash the potential of current, available technology by getting it off the shelves and into the streets.
- Third, and related to the issue of efficiency, is the need increase our investment in technology innovation. We need to work towards creating a low-carbon infrastructure in the US.
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Comments
wayne eichler — Jun 19 2008 08:27 AM
I heard your representative on WOR radio this morning. You ask for energy efficiency while we are in the clutches of an oil price spiral. This country has no energy policy for the past 30 years. Energy efficiency takes time to implement as well. Do you think people have the means to swap out appliances, retrofit houses and heating systems immediately. Have you priced the cost of a solar system for a house. The payback is years. Do you think transportation infrastructure can be built overnight? Do you think nuclear power plants can be built with the NIMBY crowd always crying. Do you think other countries are sitting on their hands not looking for oil. The top three countries we import oil from are not from the middle east. Saudia Arabia is #4 on our list.
What this country needs is leadership and a multi-facted approach to solve our problems which involves oil drilling in the USA.
You guys need to get out of Washington and see what is happening in the real world.
Bill Britton — Jun 19 2008 11:19 AM
From a member of the "real world": Finding more oil within the U.S. is one option, to be sure. However, with the exception of perhaps the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), most U.S. reserves are becoming increasingly difficult, and more expensive, to extract. This includes both on- and off-shore reserves.
There are two main causes of the spike in oil prices: a weak U.S. dollar and the rise in consumption seen in the developing world (to say nothing of our native thirst for the black liquid). Ramping up extraction of more-expensive domestic oil will have little effect on the price of a barrel of crude and would not be realized in the near term, given the dearth of drilling rigs for starters.
Yes, we need a multifaceted national energy policy that takes into account the pain inflicted on the middle and lower income quintiles in this country. To do that, policymakers and business leaders must move away from defining “long term” as the next election or the next shareholder meeting. The bottom line is, in a word, our survival.
We have passed the point of following a business-as-usual approach regarding energy use and greenhouse-gas emissions. We need a national policy that involves all citizens and must include consumer education, alternative-energy development, conservation, federal mandates, tax and direct-payment subsidies for the less advantaged and for emerging energy technologies, clean-coal development, and a revitalized nuclear program, among others—all under the aegis of a federal energy “czar” (although I hate that word).
Peak oil is history, having reached its zenith some two to five years ago, depending on the analysis. But peak consumption still has a way to go, which, if you superimpose the two slopes, total oil depletion can be measured in a matter of decades, although oil-shale and tar-sand development could delay this somewhat.
The next administration must be honest with the American people. The transition to sustainable future will be difficult under the best of circumstances and will require a serious reappraisal of both individual and national priorities.
aleister williams — Jun 26 2008 09:04 PM
for how long can we keep oil execs and politians away from the shores?
When all our current oil supplies are depleted, I'm betting the government will go into convulsions and rip apart the oceans in a desperate measure to suck out every last drop of oil.
The oceans are screwed in the end.