Offshore Drilling

Bush lifted the executive order banning offshore oil drilling on Monday. This is an entirely symbolic move, since the Congressional ban remains in place, but it's clearly intended to spur public debate on the issue and set up domestic oil production as a campaign issue for John McCain.

First, a prediction: The Congressional ban will probably fall. Public opinion is behind ending the ban; according to a Rasmussen report written back in June, 67% of voters believe drilling should be allowed. It seems unlikely that Democrats will be able to maintain party unity in the face of that kind of public support, especially since they would need to specifically vote to renew the ban, which expires annually.

The oil industry is, of course, lobbying for the ban to end. But if I were them, I'd be nervous. According to Rasmussen, 64% of voters believe lifting the ban will lower gas prices, including a whopping 78% of conservatives. But any new supply from drilling won't hit the market for years, and even when it does it will only be a tiny fraction of the global oil supply. If the ban is lifted and gas prices stay high, people are going to start looking for someone to blame, and "big oil" will be in the crosshairs.

From an environmental perspective, this is a rather sad shift in public sentiment. We stand at a crossroads; we can either react to this crisis by shifting our economy to fuels that do not contribute so heavily to global climate change; or we can search for more oil as a way to temporarily lessen our short-term economic pain, at the expense of worsening a long-term environmental disaster. It seems all it took for people to switch to supporting the latter, short-sighted strategy was gasoline passing the magic $4.00/gallon mark. It's surprising how small a price we're really willing to pay to preserve the health of our planet for future generations.