A point worth repeating
06/19/2008
We hate to sound like a broken record, but we’ll say it again: If Americans want to find a lasting solution to the current energy crisis and remain leaders on the world stage, they need to stop looking to short-term solutions and make serious sacrifices.
President Bush’s June 18 urging of Congress to end a moratorium on offshore oil drilling and presumed Republican presidential nominee John McCain’s own support for ending the ban would endanger coastal ecosystems and tourism while doing little to protect the nation’s long-term economic security.
Certainly, when even fill-ups of tiny coupes cost more than $60 it is easy to be tempted by the prospect of flooding the nation’s oil reserves with domestically produced crude. American consumers repeatedly take it on the chin, sucking up higher and higher fuel costs as well as increased prices for food, construction and other economic activities affected by rising petroleum costs. Nonetheless, the drawn out process of ramping up production offshore, building new oil platforms and increasing refinery output in the United States will, at best, delay — but not stop — the inexorable rise in fuel costs. The same time, energy and investment it would take to restart an offshore oil production infrastructure could be used to research and deploy alternative technologies and infrastructure to limit our dependence on any oil — foreign or domestic.
Anyone who enjoys the unique beauty of Ventura County and the Central Coast should realize what’s at stake: a lush undersea environment and coastline crucial to our economy and way of life. On the other hand, the oil rigs already in operation off our coast provide high-paying jobs, so the prospect of more such jobs is a lucrative one. Even so, imagine the possibility of economic growth that could occur if we put our best minds, engineers and entrepreneurs to work developing new technologies, techniques and systems to power our society in new ways. We can continue to try to squeeze more and more black blood from this oily stone, or we can look forward, we can innovate.
We can do as Bush and his allies say they desire and cut our dependence on foreign oil, or we can do one better: We can end our dependence on oil altogether. Put another way, we can leave the problem for others to solve another day, or we can solve it ourselves.
This mess is ours. Let’s clean it up.
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