So, as you likely heard, John McCain recently took time off from pretending to be Mr. Environment to join Dubya in calling for the resumption of offshore drilling (thus prompting his possible No. 2, Florida Governor Charlie Crist, to also rethink the issue.) As many writers have pointed out, this just so happens to be a switch from what he said three weeks earlier, in keeping with McCain’s usual m.o.
Well, the environmental consequences notwithstanding, TIME’s Bryan Walsh asks the pertinent question: “Will more drilling mean cheaper gas?” Nope. “Even if tomorrow we opened up every square mile of the outer Continental Shelf to offshore rigs, even if we drilled the entire state of Alaska and pulled new refineries out of thin air, the impact on gas prices would be minimal and delayed at best. A 2004 study by the government’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) found that drilling in ANWR would trim the price of gas by 3.5 cents a gallon by 2027.” In other words, this is the gas tax holiday all over again. (TIME link via Dangerous Meta.)
Frankly, I have little problem with expanding oil production here in North America as long as it has the effect of denying terrorist nations and organizations the funding necessary to operate. I doubt very much if that will be the result. Rather, the friends of the Bush family will be granted no bid permits to drill on federal land without benefit of any kind to the American people whose land it is! Hell, it could easily be the same mideast weasles who presently fund terrorism who get the breaks and permission to work inside our sovereign borders.