Sarah Palin is an “expert” on energy. Um… moving on. She, John McCain (in one of his more recent policy flipflops) and, of course, President Bush, advocate opening up all sorts of protected areas for domestic oil exploitation. In fact, they are saying this is a solution to our gas-pump blues. Here are the bumper stickers I’m seeing in town, these days (snapped from a neighbor’s minivan):
And here is a visual representation of how much our oil supply will change, if we start tearing up our coastlines & wildlife refuges, and destroying our marine & arctic habitats to get those precious drops of oil. Estimates are that no significant price change could be expected until 2030 at the least, and not much, at that. (Chart originally ganked from gristmill, data from the official U.S. Energy Information Administration):
Note how the yellow line is not even visible before about 2020. Naturally, when McCain reversed his position on this, the price of gas fell. This might have even had something to do with his announcement. But it could not possibly have had anything to do with long-term price determinants, since nothing had changed. Even if these estimates could be disputed rationally, I agree with my insightful wife: finding more oil is not our real problem. In my view, that’s kind of like a drug addict explaining that his real problem is not having enough heroin. At some point (ASAP, really) the issue of need must be recognized as much more important than the issue of supply.
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Cool graph. I’m gonna have to steal it. It does a much better job of depicting what I’ve been trying to explain to people who think that drilling in ANWR is a good idea.
Well, I certainly stole it, so who would I be to deny someone else that pleasure? ;)
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