26th
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Photo by Dan Chapman ©2001
Stanyan Entertainment Group
A Thought for Today
The only thing we own without condition
is experience.
TO BEGIN WITH
For the third time in five years the house was invaded again last week
by marauding bees that built a very healthy hive in the atrium. During
the removal of the persistent pests Edward got to talking with Chris,
our go to it guy for rounding up the little buzzers, and in the course
of the conversation the subject of natural disasters came up. Edward
attempted to point out that nature seems to be working overtime these
days. Floods, drought, wildfires, earthquakes, hurricanes, out of season
typhoons, heat waves, the world is suffering through an unseasonable
season of natural catastrophic happenings.
Nearly every day we hear of an earthquake occurring some place where no
such thing has happened before and the seas and winds of the world
continue to act up in a way that defies logic. The mighty Mississippi is
just one of America’s rivers determined to stretch its banks and
Southern California has just had nearly a week of triple digit
temperatures that in one forty-eight-hour period caused more than 700
wildfires to break out in Nevada and California. The fire season hasn’t
officially started here so none of this bodes well to ease an already
acute drought that will undoubtedly bring water rationing for many
western states before the summer ends.
In a laconic, of no specific origin accent, Chris was having none of
this, “My grandparents spoke of many catastrophes that occurred when
they were growing up,” he said. Maybe, but I’m pretty sure that despite
the tales from Father Time most of us would just as soon slip Mother
Nature a tranquilizer.
ADDING TO THE MIX
Given what’s going on without too much help from Mankind should we be
accelerating our business as usual reckless disregard for the planet
that sustains us? Probably not, or better still, no.
Take drilling for oil in protected reserves for instance; The New York
Times based on one end of our continent and The Times of Los Angeles,
located at its other end both take up the topic and come to similar
conclusions.
RM 6/23/2008
OIL BE SEEING YOU
DRILLER INSTINCT
Blaming environmentalists for high energy prices,
never mind the evidence, has been a hallmark of
the Bush administration.
By Paul Krugman The New York Times: June 20, 2008
Thus, in 2001 Dick Cheney attributed the California electricity crisis
to environmental regulations that, he claimed, were blocking power-plant
construction. He completely missed the real story, which was that energy
companies — probably some of the same companies that participated in his
secret task force, which was supposed to be drawing up a national energy
strategy — were driving up prices by deliberately withholding
electricity from the market.
And the administration has spent the last eight years trying to convince
Congress that the key to America’s energy security is opening up the
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling — even though estimates
from the Energy Information Administration suggest that drilling in the
refuge would make very little difference to the energy outlook, and the
oil companies themselves aren’t especially interested in punching holes
in the tundra.
But it still comes as a surprise and a disappointment to see John McCain
joining that unfortunate tradition.
I’ve never taken Mr. McCain’s media reputation as a maverick seriously,
because on most issues, he’s a thoroughly conventional conservative. On
energy policy, however, he has in the past seemed to show some
independence. Most notably, he voted against the really terrible,
special-interest-driven 2005 energy bill, which was backed by the Bush
administration — and by Barack Obama.
But that was then.
In his Monday speech on energy, Mr. McCain tried to touch all the bases.
He talked about conservation. He denounced the evils of speculation:
“While a few reckless speculators are counting their paper profits, most
Americans are coming up on the short end.” A weird aspect of the current
energy debate, incidentally, is the fact that many of the same
market-worshipping conservatives who first denied that there was a
dot-com bubble, then denied that there was a housing bubble, are utterly
convinced that nasty speculators are responsible for high oil prices.
The item that made news, however, was Mr. McCain’s call for more
offshore drilling. On Tuesday, he made this more explicit, calling for
exploration and development of the currently protected outer continental
shelf. This was a reversal of his previous position, and it went a long
way toward aligning his energy policy with that of the Bush
administration.
That’s not a good thing.
As many reports have noted, the McCain/Bush policy on offshore drilling
doesn’t make sense as a response to $4-a-gallon gas: the White House’s
own Energy Information Administration says that exploiting the outer
shelf wouldn’t yield noticeable amounts of oil until the 2020s, and even
at peak production its impact on oil prices would be “insignificant.”
But what I haven’t seen emphasized is the broader picture: Mr. McCain
has now aligned himself with an administration that, even aside from its
blame-the-environmental-movement tendencies, has established an
extensive track record as the gang that couldn’t think straight about
energy policy.
Remember, they didn’t just insist that the Iraqis would welcome us as
liberators; on the eve of the Iraq war, administration officials were
also adamant that regime change in Iraq would add millions of barrels a
day to the world oil supply, driving oil prices way down. (In fact,
Iraq’s oil output took five years just to recover to preinvasion
levels.)
So why would Mr. McCain associate himself with these characters? The
answer, presumably, is that it’s a cynical political calculation.
I’m reasonably sure that Mr. McCain’s advisers realize that offshore
drilling would do nothing for current gas prices. But they may believe
that the public can be conned. A Rasmussen poll taken before Mr.
McCain’s announcement suggests that the public favors expanded offshore
drilling, and believes (wrongly) that this would lower gasoline prices.
And Mr. McCain may also hope to shore up his still fragile relations
with the Republican base. As anyone who has read what’s in his inbox
after publishing an article on oil prices can testify, there are many
people on the right who believe that all our energy problems have been
caused by sanctimonious tree-huggers. Mr. McCain has just thrown that
constituency some red meat.
But I very much doubt that Mr. McCain’s gambit will work. In fact, it’s
almost certainly self-destructive.
To have a chance in November, Mr. McCain has to convince voters that he
isn’t just Bush, continued. Energy policy is one of the areas where he
could best have made that case.
Instead, he has ceded the high ground on energy to Mr. Obama, and linked
himself firmly to the most unpopular president on record.
©Copyright 2008 by The New York Times. All Rights Reserved.
McCAIN AND BUSH, OIL OPPORTUNISTS
It's nonsense for them to use the run-up in gas prices as an excuse to
advocate offshore drilling.
The Los Angeles Times: June 21, 2008
President Bush and presumptive Republican presidential nominee John
McCain both recently proposed an end to the federal moratorium on
offshore oil drilling. What's really needed, though, is a moratorium on
worthless suggestions from politicians for lowering gas prices.
GOP leaders like Bush and McCain are rolling out their own nonsensical
non-solutions to the energy crisis after the Senate this month beat back
an equally ridiculous attempt at gas-pump pandering by Democrats. Their
bill would have hampered investment in new supply by imposing a
shortsighted windfall-profits tax on oil companies, and it might have
set off a trade war by allowing the U.S. attorney general to sue OPEC on
antitrust grounds. Fortunately for the country, it failed to win enough
votes to avoid a filibuster.
Enter Bush, who on Wednesday said he would end his father's 1990
presidential moratorium on most coastal drilling if Congress would lift
its own, separate ban. His reasoning was so contradictory that it's a
wonder he could finish his news conference without cracking up. While
conceding that the long-term solution to high oil prices is to pursue
alternative energy sources, he argued that "in the short run, the
American economy will continue to rely largely on oil, and that means we
need to increase supply." The U.S. Energy Information Administration
says that even if oil companies are allowed to tap the 18 billion
barrels under coastal waters that are currently off-limits, oil prices
wouldn't be expected to fall until 2030. How is that a short-term
solution?
Coastal drilling isn't just opposed by a bunch of Prius-driving greenies
from Santa Barbara. Existing moratoriums were put in place at the behest
of tourism interests, fishermen, small businesses and coastal dwellers.
That's because drilling in these waters benefits oil companies but
causes direct economic harm to everyone else by trashing beaches,
poisoning marine life and ruining views.
Californians have been leery of coastal drilling since a devastating
spill from an oil platform off Santa Barbara in 1969. Drilling
proponents counter that new technology has greatly decreased the risk of
spills, but they nonetheless still happen. And there's more to worry
about than spills. Texas is not known for its beaches, which attract the
detritus -- such as tar balls and empty oil drums -- from thousands of
oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. Drilling releases a host of toxic
chemicals, creating such problems as dangerously high mercury levels in
fish.
The destruction of our coasts is too high a price to pay for a
negligible decrease in gas prices that's 20 years down the road. The
latest Republican oil strategy deserves the same fate as the Democrats'.
©Copyright 2008 by The Los Angeles Times. All Rights Reserved.
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