Obama, however, seems to be turning the corner. The 'West Wing' TV series mirroring real life thing is coming up again. Just last night I saw the episode on which Bartlet's psychiatrist said to him, and I'm really paraphrasing, "Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves and won the civil war. He did that even though he may have risked losing half the country. You [Jed] don't do something because you're afraid you'll lose electoral votes in Michigan."
Well, today Obama looked straight in the eyes of environmentalists and said, "you make good points, I respect you, but I cannot blindly follow the path to the left on this one. The other path will get me where I want to go a bit more quickly and safely."
Or, in his own words,
This is not a decision that I’ve made lightly,” the president said in prepared remarks in a speech on energy security. “But the bottom line is this: given our energy needs, in order to sustain economic growth, produce jobs, and keep our businesses competitive, we’re going to need to harness traditional sources of fuel even as we ramp up production of new sources of renewable, homegrown energy.
It is a risk. It may cost him votes. It pisses off people who got him in office, but this reminds me so clearly of the Cape Wind Farm project going on now, which had awesome news today, look it up. I've written about this before, but the Wampanoag's are claiming they are upset b/c the serenity of their land will be spoiled visually by wind turbines - yet they fail to realize that the serenity of their land will be threatened by polar ice caps and Global devastation if we don't care of things now.
Obama is saying, very clearly, that long-term stability in this environment is created by reducing our dependence on foreign oil - using the oil we have here in conjunction with other resources.
Personally, what do I know? Do I like the sound of drilling for oil off the coast of Mexico? No, but I have no idea why I don't like the sound of it. Environmentalists are environmentalists...if someone told me they were going to drill for oil at the 50 yard line of Gillette Stadium I'd be upset, sure, but that doesn't mean my feelings should be taken into account.
As Toby said last night on the 'West Wing', in regards to a hypothetical verbal assault on Islamic Fanatics..."They'll like us when we win." Well, you know what Barack, they'll like you when you win, and when in 50 years we realize we are destroying this planet and your actions are the first Real Presidential step in putting a halt to that destruction.
1 comment:
This is in response to "No, but I have no idea why I don't like the sound of it." Here is my explanation of why I don't like the sound of it.
Currently, oil is an under-priced resource. Yes, I know you pay a lot for gas, but not nearly enough. For now, I'm going to discuss gas for cars, though the principles apply to most uses of oil. Currently, the cost of gas breaks down to the market price, plus some taxes. The taxes are in place to pay for roads, but only pay for a portion of them. There are other driving-related taxes (vehicle tax, etc) that cover part of the roads, but these total taxes only cover about 60% of the cost of roads. That means roads are 40% subsidized by the government. I think that gas taxes should cover more of this cost, but that is a separate argument.
Assuming global warming is real (again, a separate argument, but the science here is very strong), every time you burn gas, you are contributing to the warming. This has a cost that society has to bear (in economics terms, this is a negative externality). While the cost of this negative externality isn't easy to determine, it is definitely not $0. Hopefully, the government prices these negative externalities in the form a tax (think alcohol and cigarette taxes).
Until there is some kind of tax in place (carbon tax, carbon permits, cap and trade, etc), the price of gas will be lower than the true value, which provides incentives to buy more gas than you should. By increasing the supply of gas (what will happen if we open up new areas to drilling), we'll put further negative pressure on gas prices. This could easily exasperate the bad incentive structure currently built into gas prices.
So, for now I don't like the sound of it because it will promote people to use more gas than they should be using. If/when a tax is put in place on carbon emissions, and adjustments are made for the funding of roads, then this argument disappears and I would be more willing to consider it.
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