Oil and the Moon

Here's something to consider from Blogflict: As the price of gas inches closer to $4.50 a gallon, its no wonder it has become a central issue in the Presidential election. The issue is how to best bring down the price. John McCain and Barack Obama have very different ideas on which is the best policy to pursue. They both miss the point. The oil and energy crisis will present the next President of the United States with an incredible opportunity.

The next President will have a strong and clear mandate from the public to do something about oil prices. All options will be on the table. But the boldest option of them all isn’t even being discussed.

John McCain wants to open up offshore drilling to the petroleum industry. This would increase our supply of available oil. Econ 101, more supply, lower prices. Obama is opposed to the drilling, fearful of the ecological damage it poses to the environment.

Attacking the supply side of the oil imbroglio is difficult. Saudi Arabia continues to show mild indifference to raising their regular production, drilling is an expensive and time consuming enterprise, and there is a fear that increasing the supply will only encourage people to use more, not less oil, so the net effect is negligible.

Attacking the demand side is just as difficult. By reducing demand, people would need to undergo a behavior change. Car pools, new light bulbs, new habits, new daily patterns to create efficiency would be needed. Most people don’t do change very well.

The drag on the overall economy has made this a challenging time for America. But what better time than for us to rise to the challenge. The time has come to think big and bold and to move this country forward with an energy policy that takes us into a new direction.

Right now, it is pure fantasy to think that in a decade we could be self-reliant as a country for our energy needs. But in the past when our country needed to marshal our strengths and turn fantasy into reality, we did it. So why not do it again?

In 1962 the idea of putting a man on the moon and returning him safely was science fiction, it sounded absurd, just as absurd as making American energy self-sufficient today. Yet, we found a way to do it.

On a sweltering late summer day in 1962, President John F. Kennedy declared, “We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.”

Barack Obama has said offshore drilling is a short term solution, not a long term one. But he is wrong. The petroleum industry lobby says that if we begin offshore drilling today, it will take approximately 7 to 10 years for the supply to hit the market. So by allowing the drilling to commence, it will do nothing to ease prices today.

If we are going to focus on a solution that would relief in a decade, why not throw out the playbook and do something different? Let’s declare it the goal of the United States of America to become energy self-sufficent in 10 years. Let’s invest mightily in alternative energy solutions. We won World War II in large measure because of public-private partnerships. Those same partnerships can help us win this battle over energy. Republicans will say its wasteful spending, Democrats will say it will take away from important government programs. They both will be wrong.

If we invest we will succeed, if we succeed, the geopolitical landscape of the world changes. No longer will American President’s need to come sat in hand to the King of Saudi Arabia, worry about ’strategic oil interests’ in the Middle East, nor worry about funding both sides in the War on Terror.

Just think what a different country we could be in 10 years from now if we succeeded? Does it sound like a fantasy? Sure it does. But so too did President Kennedy’s declaration in 1962. Yet 7 years later, it happened.

Let’s make it happen again.