Stu: We must cut oil usage. But til then, we have to drill
Normally, the only thing the Democrats want to drill are their secretaries, and the only thing the Republicans want to conserve is the three-martini lunch.
JUST BEFORE the election, candidate Barack Obama dropped his previous "nyet" and agreed to some offshore drilling as part of a compromise to promote energy alternatives. I'm not sure how many people believed him.
He had talked the talk, then got busy on bailouts and health care.
Suddenly, early this month - kazaam! - he walked the walk by proposing to open stretches of the Atlantic coastline, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the north coast of Alaska to oil and natural-gas drilling.
Normally, the only thing the Democrats want to drill are their secretaries, and the only thing the Republicans want to conserve is the three-martini lunch.
Obama's new policy sent a thrill up the leg of Big Oil and acid rain down the arm of environmentalists. His plan so stunned Republicans, they couldn't find an immediate way to call it Marxism - especially not after Sarah Palin's "Drill, baby, drill" cheerleading.
Yes, yes, yes. The sparklies yelp that drilling takes about seven years to produce oil (largely true), that it won't lower the price at the pump much (may be true) and that domestic reserves are sparse (partially true).
It seems like an apparent contradiction to be looking for more oil at the very time we are seeking to reduce our need for it, but Americans are oil addicts. We need to quit, but we can't go cold turkey.
More than 30 years ago, in a rare sensible message, President Carter warned about America's dependence on foreign oil. Had we heeded him and started to drill and refine then, we would have been producing for at least the last 20 years, increasing the world supply and perhaps holding the price down. But we didn't, and the sparklies are telling us to not do it again.
What are they thinking?
It's painfully simple: The more we produce here, the less we import. And while we are producing (walking), we should simultaneously be conserving more (chewing gum) and increasing
fuel-efficiency rules for our cars, which the government ordered a few days ago.
At the same time, we need to get cracking with wind power, solar power, oil shale, biomass, river- and ocean-movement power, even coal and nuclear power.
France (those cheese-eating, wine-sipping, beret-wearing wienies) gets 70 percent of its electricity from nukes. Sweden gets 45 percent from the atom. Since the '70s (Three Mile Island, not one death) and Chernobyl (I wouldn't get in a car built by the Russians), the technology has radically changed, for the better and safer.
No? Go talk with the homeowners living in McMansions within sight of the Limerick nuclear plant. They don't glow in the dark. Nukes are as safe as humanly possible. Does that guarantee no accidents ever? No. Will an accident produce a China Syndrome? No.
Even as the U.S. conserves oil, the amount being sucked up by expanding China and India will soon dwarf U.S. consumption - and prices will rise. We need to get off oil to avoid exporting hundreds of billions and further weakening the dollar. But we cannot get off oil as fast as Eliot Spitzer getting off a hooker.
I'd like Obama to announce a national goal of shifting 10 percent of our energy requirements each year away from oil to anything else - solar, wind, battery, any combination of other technologies. Does 10 percent a year sound unreasonable?
In 10 years we could be virtually off oil (we'll always need a little) and we could tell the Saudis, the Iraqis and the Venezuelans to pound sand. (Canada and Mexico are actually our top two suppliers. We'd cut their orders last.)
If President Kennedy challenged America to get to the moon in a decade, and we did it in less than 10, how hard can this be?
E-mail stubyko@phillynews.com or call 215-854-5977. For recent columns: