The current spats over drilling are yet another example of how poorly served we are by partisan politics as election-minded politicians on both sides of the aisle use exaggeration and spin to pander to the peanut gallery, and there is a conspicuous absence of statesmanship.
If the offshore billing moratorium is a bad idea (I tend to agree that it is), how come nobody noticed until now? Why doesn’t Bush do his part to lift it without waiting for Congress? What has he been waiting for the last 7 !/2 years?
If we want to make a change in the law, we need to find the soft part of the opposition, and work something out with them quietly, and then present a compromise solution as a bipartisan proposal. We don’t accomplish things by electioneering and finger pointing. That’s the difference between a politician and a statesman. And if its a good idea then its a good idea, regardless of any “crisis”, or regardless of how little on a relative percentage basis it affects prices in the short term.
The Democrats are no better on this issue. Its an absurd exaggeration to say that current technology for offshore drilling would “destroy” the environment, or that using a small part of ANWAR would “destroy” a “pristine” environment. And minimizing the beneficial effect on supplies and domestic productivity by using percentages and relative contributions has no logic. “This won’t help right away so why bother?” — what kind of reasoning is that? Every solution does not have to be a complete solution. If it helps a little, then it helps a little. If the environmental concerns can be mitigated, then some projects can be justified and an outright moratorium goes too far.
This is yet another example of how tedious and unproductive all the partisan bickering can be, and what a yawning shortage we have of public servants who are willing to work out sane public policy on a rational basis without the constant drone of us-against-them red-blue civil warfare. Sorry to offend the Debbie Cook lovers, but she is just a knee-jerk environmentalist who will dream up an argument to oppose every form of development.
You’re right…there are extremists on both sides of this issue. But c’mon, lifting the moratorium wouldn’t have an effect on our domestic oil production and gas prices for years to come. So for Bush to get on this hobby horse now is nothing more than rank politics playing to people’s fear over rising gas prices. And it’s a gift to the oil companies…like they need anymore gifts. It figures…public policy seen only through the lens of how it benefits big business. Politicians like that are a dime-a-dozen these days.
No, it’s not time to EXPAND our need/production/consumption of oil…the urgent need is for creative alternatives that steer us away from oil.
Who owns the oil?
Mr. St. John obviously didn’t even read Debbie Cook’s statement on drilling. His post seems reasonable enough except for his gratuitous swipe at the Huntington Beach Mayor which had nothing to do with the subject at hand.
He also seems ignorant about Debbie Cook’s record on the city council. She is not a knee-jerk environmentalist and if Mr. St. John sat down to talk with her, he would discover a different person than the cartoon-character stereotype he seeks to impose on the Mayor.
Anyone with a passing knowledge of Debbie’s tenure on the City Council knows that she is the most thoughtful and the most fiscally responsible member of the council, tight with the taxpayer’s money.
Hi Ron! Only a little digression before we return to your main points – the good one on partisan politics being unhelpful here, and the arguable one on offshore drilling itself – but you knew this was coming:
As the pre-eminent, but by no means only, “Debbie Cook lover” on this blog, I of course take exception to your description of her as “a knee-jerk environmentalist who will dream up an argument to oppose every form of development.”
In her seven years on council, she has supported development on several occasions, but always in the context of “smart, slow growth” and “sustainability.” “Knee-jerk” of course means THOUGHTLESS, and that is probably the last word that could ever be applied to this eminently thoughtful public servant.
You once expressed confusion to me about why people call Cook fiscally conservative; I think like most busy citizens you probably haven’t followed city politics that closely this past decade, but it’s been a minority of Cook, fellow Dem Jill Hardy, and conservative Republican Don Hansen, who have consistently been the most cautious and prudent about dipping into the city’s general fund for anything but the greatest necessities. Add to that her success as a businesswoman, and the grudging respect she’s got from nearly all sides for her and her husband’s canny investments, and she just doesn’t fit the stereotype of anticapitalist luddite ascetic your party wants to squeeze her into.
I think that, after a very sensible nonpartisan post, you’re trying at the end to burnish your Republican bonafides by bashing Debbie unfairly. Repeat after me: “I can be a good Republican and still support Debbie.” Lots of Republicans are, and they will be coming out of the woodworks over the summer and fall. She’s a lot closer to you on most issues than Dana is, more than you realize yet.
OK, back to offshore drilling…
For your reading pleasure, Mr. St. John
http://calitics.com/showDiary.do;jsessionid=52578FBEE435307A1913B31DD27D46C0?diaryId=6227
Oh, and here’s your favorite centrist Republican governor on offshore drilling:
http://calitics.com/showDiary.do;jsessionid=52578FBEE435307A1913B31DD27D46C0?diaryId=6228
Ron –
I have to concur with Vern. I very much appreciate your post-partisan attitude, but bringing Debbie Cook into this is what you Neo-cons would call a ‘preemptive strike.’
SMS
I was glad to see Vern’s comment, as it sums up much of what I felt in reading this post. I applaud you for your calls for post-partisanship – I am a decline-to-state voter and hate seeing any one put party over principle and people – but you lose credibility in the end by making a blanket statement about Debbie Cook that is plainly false. A quick Google search informed me of her involvement in California 2020 and that’s just one example of her working with forward-thinking developers in planning for sustainable communities. Debbie is for responsible land use and to say that she will “dream up an argument to oppose every form of development” is just wrong. Instead, she should be commended for actually working on solutions across party lines while others are engaged in the partisan bickering.
FINAL WORD on Debbie and Development; info I didn’t have earlier; from a phone message from former HB Mayor Connie Boardman, whose term in council overlapped with Debbie’s:
“Hi Vern… Debbie, when I was on the Council, supported the Pacific City Development on PCH in Seal Beach, it’s a mixed-use development including 4-story condominiums, commercial, it was a good project,a redevelopment project basically, I supported it too, there was going to be a market and restaurants and stuff .. a car company was the developer … and .. there are other smaller developments around the community that she supported, there were homes on Main Street, forget the company’s name (PLC? PCL?) used to be the Chevron Company, that wants to put in town homes, and she approved that development, I mean there were a lot of them, a lot of them, you know as well as I do that that comment about being ‘opposed to any development’ is just ridiculous. OK, bye.”
Didn’t mean to hijack this thread, so let’s pivot back to your topic of offshore drilling by paraphrasing Debbie’s above-linked statement on it. It was really not the sort of comment you or I would expect from a clichéd “environmentalist,” didn’t mention danger to the ocean at all (maybe that goes without saying) but it’s fairly summarized as “This plan won’t really do much of anything to solve our crisis; LET’S GET SERIOUS.”
Right now we are in a market and speculation caused crisis. It is neither a supply or a demand caused crisis. Perception is reality in this type of arena, taking a stand and doing something like making a commitment to expand the resources available for market will in fact put pressure on the speculators with a rise in future supplies, which is what they are purchasing and should drive down the prices. As well we can cut back our usage which will drive down demand.
As I have said before it’s not the answer to our future energy needs, however like a lot of other things in life when you start to make incremental changes you gain momentum, and we need to build some momentum in addressing our future energy needs realistically.
I think all the resources we have available should be on the table. Oil, gas, nuclear, solar, wind, water, shale, tar sands, coal, bio oil, all of it. We need greater refinery capacity as well as other infrastructure improvements too. Yes we need to do it in an environmentally sound manner. We need to foster emerging renewables like solar. Reduce demand by use of OLEDs instead of the mercury loaded CFL’s. I like the German commitment to solar too, I wish we would do something similar here.
OK, maybe I was too hard on Debbie Cook. But I’m still against the moratorium. Its like saying every single offshore drilling project is automatically wrong, and that can not be.
Ron –
Agreed.
See? You may not be a blinded Neo-con after all. ONE OF US! ONE OF US! 😛
SMS
As the first stated, it’s time, past time, to be looking at other sources of energy. Right now we, as a nation, are looking like a junkie scrounging for a cheap hit.
Check this one out. Iwould have posted this on the top of the list but can’t, so here it is.
Larry, Art, Sarah, Tom, Vern anyone…? please repost it that way if you can.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=UOpcPfAarjY
Thanks Sarah, I’m a classic film buff too and I get the Freaks reference.
But I still want to lift the moratorium on offshore drilling.