Over a Barrel
Thursday, August 14th, 2008
It wasn’t quite a “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” moment but Senator John McCain’s bid in mid-June to end the 26-year-old restriction on developing the oil and gas reserves beneath the outer continental shelf certainly stirred a lot of attention and has put the Obama campaign on the defensive. The reason: gasoline.
Regardless of whether he polled and focus-grouped this issue, Mr. McCain has dialed into rising gas prices much more intensively than Senator Barack Obama. Of all the issues he’s tackled this year, none, not even the Iraq War, have generated more campaign buzz for him than the two big proposals Senator McCain made about gasoline.
In April he called for temporarily suspending the federal gas tax, prompting Senator Hillary Clinton to endorse the idea. In June it was ending the moratorium on outer continental shelf exploration which Senator Obama described as a “gimmick.”
Here at the Apollo Alliance, we note that when it comes to energy, the two presidential candidates share decidedly similar views. Both support investments in clean renewable energy, and improvements in energy efficiency that also would generate millions of new green-collar jobs. Both support development of technology to burn coal in a way that dramatically reduces or eliminates global climate change pollution. Mr. McCain is an ardent supporter of nuclear power, a generating source that Mr. Obama, with caveats, says he’s open to. And both support changes in policy to respond to climate change.
Where they sharply differ is what to do about the price of gas. Mr. McCain, for all the derision heaped on him by his opponents, has found in gas prices a way to reach Americans where they are: Commuting long distances in large vehicles that are gobbling up more and more of their disposable incomes. Even more than that, gas heading to $5 a gallon also reflects the vulnerability that millions of people feel about a drive-through way of life they can’t easily trade in.
Those of us who’ve tracked energy issues and public sentiment knew it was bound to come, and this summer it has. The price of gasoline emerged as the highest public priority in the 2008 election. And with every price increase, gasoline solidifies its place at the top of the heap.
What is the role of the Apollo Alliance? It’s this: Identifying and promoting the dramatic steps that really make sense in leading the nation to a clean energy economy that responds to rising prices and builds the shared prosperity that we and our Alliance members envision.
That path involves investing in research, technology, equipment, and practices to much more quickly scale up clean energy resources: Wind, solar, geo-thermal, and cellulosic ethanol. That path involves setting new standards, and a new national purpose to develop much higher levels of energy efficiency for homes, offices, manufacturing plants, and vehicles.
And that path, put simply, leads to millions of new family-supporting jobs, and energy stability and security at lower costs and at a much faster pace than drilling for oil in the deep ocean. In the first quarter of 2008, for instance, wind developers added 1,500 megawatts of new capacity nationally, bringing US wind generating capacity to 18,000 megawatts. The American Wind Energy Association says the U.S. now exceeds the generating capacity of Germany and is the number one wind generating nation in the world. That occurred while Congress dithered about whether to renew a federal tax credit that is vital to the industry and a bargain to America.
The new clean energy path, which we call The New Apollo Program, does not consider more deep-ocean drilling to be a suitable option. In practice, according to the Energy Information Administration, a unit of the U.S. Department of Energy, opening the outer continental shelf to exploration won’t produce a new drop of gasoline, or have any effect on gasoline prices, for at least ten years at the earliest, and likely far longer than that. Mr. McCain acknowledged that fact here in California in June when he said his proposal was designed to “have psychological impact that I think is beneficial.”
And that’s the point. Mr. McCain’s supporters assert he’s trying to do something now about a real problem in the lives of millions of voters. In contrast, Mr. McCain seeks to frame Mr. Obama’s call for a ten-year, $150 billion clean energy strategy that generates 5 million jobs as distant and unfocused.
The Apollo Alliance takes a side here, the side of the American people who are patient enough to watch the two candidates sort through the issues, but will be spitting mad if the next president and Congress focus on the political hot button outliers — outer continental shelf drilling, more nukes — while achievable and much more immediate energy solutions are laid aside.
The carbon producing industries would like nothing better than to bog Washington down in a contentious ideological fight over drilling and nuclear power while nothing else changes. The Apollo Alliance is poised to play a role to help experts and lawmakers sort through the real politik in order to make progress on reality. Neither outer continental shelf drilling nor more nuclear power plants make a difference in energy production for the next 20 years, according to most expert evaluations. Price, social aversion, and technological feasibility are impediments to both.
The question for the pragmatists, including the Apollo Alliance, is what will the public get in return. If the carbon producers and their allies in Congress insist on an ideological debate about offshore drillings, then those supporting the public interest should insist on significant public investment to scale up wind, solar, biofuels, transit, and next generation vehicles. If the nuclear power industry and its allies in Congress insist on an ideological debate on more atomic power, than those supporting the public interest should insist on significant public investment research and development for clean energy technologies, new smart transmission infrastructure development, regional high speed rail, infrastructure development to transport new biofuels from clean refinery to market.
We understand the urgency of rising gasoline prices. We view this as a teachable moment. The fastest solutions to rising gas prices lie in developing clean alternative renewable resources – and in American ingenuity, hard word, efficient practices, and entrepreneurism that is available right now.
– Keith Schneider
