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Before we get too excited about sucking more black gold out of the ground, don’t expect a few barrels of sweet crude from Alaska to bring much relief at the pump. The net effect that would have is less than a buck, most agree. Less than the price of what fuel was a year ago.
So in that spirit, we’ve prepared our own message to our congressional delegation, and it’s so simple even they can understand.
Don’t.
Just don’t do it.
Drilling in an environmentally sensitive place like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge may indeed be relatively safe. That is, most drilling operations don’t wreck the land and ruin the environment.
Most of the time.
When things go bad, though, they get catastrophic in a hurry. Think Valdez. Do we really want to chance it for what will amount to little real relief at the pump?
Not that drilling for more oil is necessarily a bad thing. Maybe siphoning off another couple million barrels from Mother Earth isn’t so bad.
Any place we drop an oil rig solves nothing.
Those who want to open up more drilling completely disregard why we’re in this energy crisis. We’re here because we got comfortably used to cheap oil supplied by anyone who’d sell it to us.
But times have changed and the world’s hunger for oil has risen at an almost alarming rate. We’ve done little to expand our national refining capacity and even less to stretch a gallon of fuel farther. Add to that, we haven’t exactly improved our standing in the eyes of the world, making most countries at least ambivalent when it comes to helping out good ol’ Uncle Sam.
So, as we drive fuel-guzzling vehicles and sneer at the idea of mass transit, we begin to realize that our energy preference comes with a high price tag. That price may be cut a bit — temporarily. Sooner or later, though, the need for more oil will precipitate another national crisis.
We don’t solve anything by drilling for more oil, we just delay the inevitable. Oil is a finite resource.
Politicians become complicit in the deal when they push for more drilling, knowing that it may help them secure a stable short-term political future. They can tell voters with aching pocketbooks they’re really doing something to help with the energy pinch, when really they are only passing the problem to the next guy or the next generation (if the oil indeed lasts that long).
Instead of cursing every gas station we see, we need a lesson from history to demonstrate what our future could be. You see, right on the horizon there are any number of exciting possibilities from solar to biofuels to wind to hydrogen. Detractors point out that none of these are commercially viable on a large scale. Now.
And before Henry Ford, mass-produced cars were inconceivable. Before the microchip a laptop was the stuff of a fantasy flick.
We need to take that money that we’d invest drilling in some remote arctic or Atlantic location and instead invest it in what made America a worldwide economic superpower. We need to attract the best, the brightest and the most innovative. In other words, we need the entrepreneurs. We need to invest in the entrepreneurs and their ideas. We need to find a way — or a variety of ways — we can become self-sufficient, while creating new economies and new markets.
It seems like there’s an easy way to solve the energy crisis and a hard way. The easy way is making the investments and living with the temporarily high price of energy. The hard way is continuing to watch the cycles of energy boom and bust, which leave most of us feeling powerless and pessimistic.
These changes aren’t even all bad. They make us consider our relationship to the earth, how much we consume and what we can do to become better stewards of this world while we’re here. That’s not a concept that’s abstract for many of us who live in a place known for exceptional natural beauty.
And that’s also why it shouldn’t be hard for residents around these parts to tell congressional leaders not to drill. After all, we understand the priceless value of nature — we can experience it anytime we hike the bluffs or get on the Mississippi. We’d fight like hell to save this place, even if it was revealed that there was Middle East worth of oil under it. So, too, should we be able to understand that no wilderness is worth the risk of destroying for a fleeting bit of energy security.
By Darrell Ehrlick, editor, on behalf of the Winona Daily News editorial board, which also includes publisher Rusty Cunningham and online editor Jerome Christenson. To comment, call 453-3507 or send e-mail to letters@winonadailynews.com.
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