McCain sells out to Big Oil

By Weekly Archive On Jun 25, 2008

Elections
are about the future, whether for the city council or the White
House. In this election for president, one candidate represents the
future while the other candidate remains stuck in the past — and
there’s no doubt which is which.

Just
look at the difference between Barack Obama and John McCain on
energy. Obama proposes a windfall profits tax on big oil companies in
order to help develop wind and solar energy, research new alternative
energy technologies, and wean ourselves from fossil fuels. McCain
proposes drilling for oil off the coast, one of the oldest and worst
ideas in the Big Oil pipeline.

Environmentalists
fought the battle over offshore drilling decades ago, and won. New
oil rigs in state coastal waters have been banned in California since
the days of former Gov., now Attorney General, Jerry Brown. There’s a
congressional ban on drilling off both the Pacific and the Atlantic
coasts, in place since 1981, plus an executive ban on both coasts,
originally signed by President George H. W. Bush in 1990. And there’s
a good reason why.

Offshore
drilling will kill the goose that lays the golden eggs: destroy our
most beautiful stretches of coastline, wreck our valuable tourism and
fishing industries. And it will continue our dependency on fossil
fuels. Meanwhile, it won’t do anything to ease today’s energy crisis.
Even if the moratorium were lifted tomorrow, it would take at least
10 years to develop the offshore rigs and onshore tanks, pipelines
and roadways necessary to begin production. By that time, with a new
energy policy, we could be well on our way to a new,
alternative-energy future.

Offshore
drilling won’t bring any relief for consumers, either. The U.S.
Department of Energy estimates there are 18 billion barrels of oil in
the moratorium areas. At present rates of consumption, those fields
would be exhausted in less than two and a half years. Our coastline
and beaches, of course, would have been lost forever. And don’t
expect lower prices at the pump. According to the Campaign for
America’s Future Online, lowering the price of crude by $1 per barrel
saves roughly 2.5 cents per gallon. Which means that getting rid of
the ban on coastal drilling would lower the price at the pump by less
than 6 cents — by 2025.

After
oil executives, nobody was happier with John McCain’s proposal than
oilman George W. Bush, who’s wanted to lift the moratorium on
offshore drilling ever since he got to the White House, but didn’t
dare. But whether McCain or Bush takes the lead, proposing offshore
drilling as a solution to our energy problems is nothing but a
cynical attempt to exploit public anger over $4-per-gallon gasoline
in order to overturn economic and environmental protections in place
for the last 27 years.

Even
John McCain knows that, or used to. His U-turn on offshore drilling
is one of the most spectacular flip-flops in presidential campaign
history. When he first ran for president, in 2000, McCain opposed
drilling off the coast and attacked the "special interests in
Washington" that were pushing it. As recently as three weeks
ago, he told a questioner at a Greendale, Wis., town hall meeting:
"With those resources, which would take years to develop, you
would only postpone or temporarily relieve our dependency on fossil
fuels."

Amazing!
In less than a month, McCain has had the political equivalent of a
religious conversion. And he’s not the only one. Charlie Crist ran
for governor of Florida on a pledge to protect the Sunshine State’s
beaches from offshore drilling. Yet no sooner did McCain flip than
Crist flopped. Isn’t it amazing what an inordinate ambition to become
vice president can do to a shallow politician?

Florida’s
Sen. Mel Martinez did a parallel back flip on offshore drilling. In
fact, among Republican politicians, only California Gov. Arnold
Schwarzenegger has resisted the urge to throw principle out the
window and jump on the Bush-McCain offshore drilling bandwagon.

Echoing
Barack Obama, Schwarzenegger told reporters: "We are in this
situation because of our dependence on traditional petroleum-based
oil. The direction our nation needs to go in, and where California is
already headed, is toward greater innovation in new technologies and
new fuel choices for consumers. That is the way we will ultimately
reduce fuel costs and also protect our environment."

How
refreshing: a Republican with both backbone and brains.

Bill
Press is host of a nationally syndicated radio show and author of a
new book, "Train
Wreck: The End of the Conservative Revolution (and Not a Moment Too
Soon)."
You can hear "The Bill Press Show" at his Web site:
billpressshow.com. His email address is: bill@billpress.com.