Drilling Our Way to a Climate Change Solution?
On Wednesday, President Obama announced a proposal to lift the long-standing ban on offshore oil and natural gas drilling off much of the south Atlantic and north Alaskan coasts, as well as parts of the Gulf of Mexico. The announcement has drawn the ire of critics across the political spectrum. Some on the left are outraged by Obama’s “betrayal” of his environmentalist base, and some on the right have called the extent of new offshore access insufficient. In reality, the policy he outlined will do very little to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and it will have no effect on oil prices in the foreseeable future. And Obama knows it. From the administration’s perspective, this announcement is about one thing: building support in the Senate for comprehensive climate change and energy legislation.
Studies have shown that offshore drilling will have very little impact on domestic oil prices. In fact, not a drop of new oil from this proposal would be seen for at least seven years, and the modest uptick in production and negligible price dip would not even be felt for two decades. Offshore drilling’s impact on real prices pales in comparison to that which could result from sound financial regulatory reform to curb speculation in commodity futures exchanges, or from putting a stop to the supply manipulation routinely practiced by OPEC in response to the artificially rising demand.
Nevertheless, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham – who is expected to introduce a bipartisan bill co-sponsored by John Kerry and Joe Lieberman within the next month – has insisted that offshore drilling be part of the energy equation of the future. Obama’s announcement on Wednesday follows similar concessions in recent months to conservative nuclear and coal interests. The administration’s Fiscal Year 2011 budget request included $36 billion for the nuclear loan guarantee program and the stimulus bill included $3.8 billion for carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) research and development.
With an otherwise small chance of success for a Senate bill resembling the House version that passed last summer, these were concessions that Obama knew he simply had to make. Comprehensive climate change and energy legislation can not pass on a strictly party-line basis. The most recent analysis of the prospects for legislation in the Senate by Environment and Energy Daily lists 41 “yes” or “likely yes” voters – with Graham being the sole Republican – and 30 “fence sitters”, consisting of 19 Democrats and 11 Republicans. But last August, a group of 10 moderate Democrats from mostly Midwest coal-dependent states said in a letter to Obama that they would not support a bill that limits greenhouse gas emissions unless American industries are protected from competition by countries that do not adopt similar standards. And just last week, a separate group of 10 coastal Democrats wrote a letter to Kerry, Lieberman, and Graham to insist that they would not support a bill that “greatly expands” offshore drilling. With so many competing interests within the Democratic Party, Republican support will be not just important, but necessary.
Comprehensive climate change and energy legislation will be a heavy lift, and the end result will be far from perfect. But if Obama’s wink-and-nod to the oil lobby frames the debate in his favor and bridges the political divide on comprehensive legislation, then this is a price that proponents of a strong and lasting climate change solution should be more than willing to pay.
With this latest concession, Obama has shown a willingness to slight a major portion of his political base for the sake of bipartisan support for comprehensive climate change and energy policy. In an op-ed co-authored by Kerry and Graham in The New York Times, the two Senators acknowledged that “this process requires honest give-and-take and genuine bipartisanship.” Now it’s time for those who support a broad ‘all-of-the-above’ package of energy solutions to come to the table and help shape legislation that will put a price on carbon and lead America toward a clean, secure, and independent energy future.
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Drilling more oil wells is not the answer, bipartisan or not. Oil and Coal are finite resources that pollute the world, period.
Wind, solar and bio fuels are not big enough to fill the world energy gap with out their own problems. They will never meet the growing world energy demands.
America needs a program to develop a new LARGE base load source of energy. One that has a high return for the energy in – energy out ratio. Back in the 70′s the US started on the development of such a program at our National Labs, but it was said to be to big … well today, we need that BIG energy source to meet the US and world energy needs.
Yes, there is a solution to the US and world energy needs, the US and world economic concerns, the world climate and environmental crisis, as well as the concern for non-proliferation of fissile materials. It can be done in 8 to 10 years with a little political will … like the Appolo program, to get us “to the moon and back safely within the decade”. Carbon emissions for power generation, as well as fission energy generation, can be put to bed, their era is over.
It is the application of CURRENTLY KNOWN technology, no magic materials needed like for laser fusion or magnetic confinement fusion, processes we have studied for decades and are still decades away from practical applications. StarPower was developed in the 50′s and proved as a controllable process in the 70′s. A viable application was vetted by the scientific community in the 90′s and is currently under study for application in Germany and Russia.
Fusion Power Corporation has done the static design of a production unit, with “no show stoppers”. FPC is in the process of the engineering design for a 35 GWe facility with no carbon emission and no highly radio-active waste disposal problems to be on line by 2020!
This is the “Silver Bullet” the Administration and the anti-nuclear organizations are looking for to solve the carbon emission and non-proliferation of fissile materials worldwide! This will lead America to a clean, secure and independent energy future.
Visit http://www.fusionpowercorporation.com for more information and how you can help to secure Americas future, for the world and our children’s future too.
Comment on April 9, 2010 @ 10:53 am