Everyone is Lying About Drilling

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.


About Ron St. John