NASA satellite photograph of BP oil slick, May 2010
Drill, baby, drill!
“Isn’t it a little foolish to have our economy held hostage by events in Libya, North Africa generally, or the Persian Gulf area?” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said on the Senate floor Monday night, citing foreign oil-producing regions now afflicted by political turmoil.
“The Obama administration needs to put an end to the existing policy of a de facto moratorium through permitting.”
Wyoming Senator John Barasso adds:
“The policies of the administration are at the root of the problem. We want to find more [oil], and under this administration we’ve been finding less.”
“We need to be exploring off-shore, on federal land and in Alaska,” he added, “but the administration’s practices are the exact opposite.”
Despite the GOP attacks, the administration actually is continuing to pursue offshore drilling and exploration as a component of their energy policy. A little over a week ago, it issued the first permit for deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico since the BP disaster. You'd think the "drill, baby, drill!" crowd would be happy, but no amount of drilling will ever satisfy them. (And no amount of drilling will be able to solve our energy challenges.)
The truth is, the GOP doesn't have a serious energy policy. It only has a pro-oil policy. We saw that last month when they unanimously voted against ending subsidies for big oil. And we saw it when they voted to cut research funding for renewable energy. They haven't just bet the farm on fossil fuels—they've bet the entire nation. And to the extend they are successful, it's not just America that pays the price, it's the whole world.