President Bush and Republican presidential candidate John McCain are responding to the high gasoline prices by calling for off-shore oil drilling and opening up wildlife refuge areas in Alaska.

And the American public is eating this up. In fact, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has been taking heat from Republicans about his refusal to go along with the increased drilling plans.
In fact, he’s taken so much heat, and lost points in the polls, that he’s starting to sing out of the Republican hymnal — and now says he would support increased drilling as part of a comprehensive energy plan.

The sad part about all this is that increased drilling of the kind suggested by Bush and McCain, won’t bring down oil prices — or at least not by much — and will take more than a decade to have any impact at all.

According to a 2004 study by the Energy Information Administration (a part of the same federal government that Bush and McCain lead), drilling in the Alaska Natural Wildlife Refuge would reduce the price of a gallon of gas by 3.5 cents — but it wouldn’t happen until 2027.

If we started drilling offshore, we could cut the price by 3 or 4 cents a gallon, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council. A 1982 federal law currently prevents that because of past oil spills.

We need to face the fact that we have 3 percent of the world’s oil supply, and we consume 24 percent of the world’s oil. There’s no way

we can sustain that — no matter how much more we drill.

Speaking of drilling, if we opened up ANWR to oil exploration, what’s to prevent the oil companies from selling the oil to Asian countries if they are the highest bidder?

What we should be doing instead is developing alternative fuels and figuring out how to more efficiently use the oil we do consume.

That includes wind, solar and biomass, natural gas and any synthetic fuel we can make from coal.

But presidential candidates can’t suggest sensible policies because they will be shouted down by professional smear-merchants who believe that the American public is stupid and easily manipulated.

Unfortunately, we’re often all too eager to prove them right.

Contact Opinion page editor Richard Mial at (608) 791-8232 or by e-mail at rmial@lacrossetribune.com.

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