TROUBL

When John McCain proposed lifting the federal ban on offshore drilling of the Outer Continental Shelf, 3 to 200 miles off the United States coast, President Bush jumped on the bandwagon. Bush said, “roughly the equivalent of two decades of imported oil from Saudi Arabia” are waiting for us under the currently banned areas in Alaska alone. With those, and the untapped reserves in the Gulf of Mexico, Bush and McCain hopes that America can become “energy independent.” Analysts, scientists and environmentalists have rightfully called it bullshit.

So did Barack Obama, who responded to McCain’s original proposal derisively, calling it “another example of short-term political posturing from Washington, not the long-term leadership we need to solve our dependence on oil.” Obama was, as he often is, absolutely right.

Opening up our own oil wells seems like a great way to gain independence from foreign oil and lower the skyrocketing price of gas at home, but neither of these optimistic goals are realistic or even possible in the near future. As Lisa Wangsness of the Boston Globe points out, “It would take at least a decade for oil companies to obtain permits, procure equipment, and do the exploration necessary to get the oil out of the ground.” Currently, America uses around 21 million barrels of oil a day, a quarter of the world total. Even if we added our own paltry two to four million barrels a day to the world market, as is speculated we could produce, we would not even meet our own needs.

As time passes and developing countries demand more oil, having access to more of our own oil could help us keep prices down by a few cents per gallon at the gas pumps, but more oil is exactly what the world doesn’t need right now. What McCain and Bush should be supporting, if they had any regard for their children, or their children’s children, is more support for alternative fuel research. Or, demanding incentives for states to put in wind turbine fields, install solar energy, and support research into more efficient fuel cells for cars. Exhausting our available fossil fuel supplies is worse than a band-aid cure for gas prices or foreign oil dependency; it is a disgusting and heedless move to pander to the interests of oil companies and their lobbyists. By laying aside consideration for the future of our country beyond the next election, Bush and McCain are showing their true colors. They’re effectively saying, “Who cares if more fossil fuels will contribute to the problems we should be committed to solving? We just want gas prices to go down so we can win this election.”

Not only is their logic flawed; it is ridiculous, along with their expectations of what offshore drilling could actually do for our country. It shows a much more upsetting tendency in national politics and, thus, in the national consciousness. A recent Gallup poll showed that 57% of respondents supported lifting the ban on offshore drilling. The American people have shown their preference for lower gas prices over the welfare of our future country and its citizens. We want a quick fix more than we want to really correct the situation in which we find ourselves. But drilling for more oil is not going to make our dependence on damaging fossil fuels go away, and it’s not going to make us oil independent. And these are the only conditions under which it would be acceptable to risk our future safety. Not only could more fossil fuels further accelerate climate change, but the escalating demand for more oil and increasingly rare natural resources will inevitably lead to conflicts between nations. National security is at risk, along with the happiness of our future.

As of now, the White House isn’t putting any serious pressure on Congress to lift its part of the moratorium, but now is still a good time to contact your Congressperson and Senators to tell them what a farce such an action would be. The American people must learn to look ahead and realize that our own immediate interest in saving money is not worth sacrificing our futures, and to let their representatives.