A strong leader will sometimes make decisions he or she believes are in the nation's interests, even when they're not immediately popular. In the case of Obama's offshore drilling announcement, not popular is saying it nicely. We're worried we've been left behind, and the right, well the right will bitch about anything Obama does in the same breath they use to scream Drill, Baby, Drill:
President Barack Obama’s decision to open parts of the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico to oil drilling isn’t winning big applause from Republicans. One, in fact, is already calling it "a smokescreen." ...
I mentioned yesterday in my Examiner column that the consensus of energy experts I've spoken with is that emerging alternative energy technology, combined with existing traditional power plants and conservation, can indeed meet our future needs. But the same people stress that even in the best case renewable energy scenarios, there is a gap in capacity that will still have to be filled, most likely by one of three reliable sources: coal, oil and gas, or nuclear. Each has significant, and yet distinctly different, advantages and disadvantages. Coal is chock full of a host of toxins before we inhale them, oil is a huge security headache and both oil and gas are pollutants and emit GHGs, and rightly or wrongly nuclear just flat out scares people. Both coal and nuclear (Along with solar and wind) don't do anything for cars and trucks unless electric vehicles become far more widespread. What to do?
The Obama administration has been promoting a comprehensive energy policy all year that aggressively pursues new sources of energy, including solar, wind, and geothermal, new ways to use existing sources with less environmental damage, and new ways to conserve the energy we have. A small part of that big deal is opening up new offshore areas for exploration. The amount of oil we might get from those untapped reserves is probably small. It might not be available for years and we may well trade it for cleaner oil anyway. But it makes sense to at least find out what's there.
In the tragic aftermath of 9-11 we missed a huge opportunity, unwillingly thrust upon us at incalculable cost, to radically change our ways. Now we finally have a President who seems willing to make the hard choices the last President shied away from. Some of us are rightly concerned about the offshore component. But if the political price tag for getting a bunch of new programs we as progressive support -- and we as a nation sorely need -- is to allow energy companies to explore some offshore oil and gas reserves, is that a price we might be willing to consider paying, at least for now?
