by Elizabeth Kolbert
April 2, 2012 inShare9 Print E-Mail Single Page Related Links
Ask the Author: Join a live chat with Elizabeth Kolbert about gas
prices on Monday, March 26th, at 3 P.M. E.T. Keywords
Gas Prices; Oil; Energy; (Pres.) Barack Obama; Mitt Romney; 2012
Election; Election Campaigns
Last week, Mitt Romney, who, it now seems, is going to become the
Republican nominee whether anybody likes it or not, called on
President Barack Obama to fire three of his Cabinet members: the
Energy Secretary, Steven Chu; the Interior Secretary, Ken Salazar; and
the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Lisa Jackson.
According to Romney, the three have spent the past few years carrying
out a not-so-secret plan to raise the price of gasoline at the pump.
Only by firing the "gas-tax trio," Romney told Fox News, can the
President demonstrate that he did not approve of this plan. "Time for
them to go," Romney said.
Romney's remarks came just days after Louisiana's governor, Bobby
Jindal, also on Fox, accused the Administration of driving up the cost
of gas in the service of its "radical" agenda. "The reality is,
gasoline prices have doubled under this President—highest prices for
oil and gasoline in a hundred and fifty years," Jindal said. "People
used to think it was because of incompetence from the Obama
Administration on energy. I think it's because of ideology." (As far
as "reality" goes, Jindal's characterization of gas prices is
inaccurate; they were higher in 2008, under President George W. Bush.)
Romney and Jindal, meanwhile, were echoing comments made by Newt
Gingrich, who accused the President of adhering to a "radical
ideology, which wants to artificially raise the cost of energy." And
Gingrich was following Rick Santorum, who, back in February, declared
that Obama's energy policies are based on a "phony theology" that
"elevates the earth above man."
Like almost anything that the Republican candidates can manage to
agree on, the Obama Administration gas-price-hike conspiracy theory is
nearly a hundred-per-cent hokum. The fakery begins with the theory's
premise: that the President could, if he wanted to, reduce the price
of oil. Oil, as it is well known, is a global commodity traded on a
global market. Gasoline prices have risen—they are up roughly fifteen
per cent since the start of the year—mostly because demand is climbing
in countries like China and because instability in the Middle East has
prompted worries about supply. (Since sabre rattling on Iran tends to
increase those worries, candidates like Santorum, who calls the
Administration's policies toward Iran "appeasement," are almost
certainly aggravating the very situation they decry.)
But an idea doesn't have to be true, or even especially convincing, to
be politically effective, and nowadays it's the most rational policy
options that seem to have the hardest time getting heard. When it
comes to gas prices, it's been clear for, well, let's just say forever
that the cost of gasoline in America is actually too low. Cheap gas
generates sprawl and traffic. It discourages the use of mass transit
and the development of alternative fuels. It contributes to regional
smog and to global climate change. The easiest and most obvious
solution has long been to raise the federal gasoline tax, which now
stands at only 18.4 cents a gallon. Among economists, there's
widespread support for this idea, including from Greg Mankiw, a
Harvard professor who happens to be a top adviser to Romney. Writing
in the Times earlier this year, Mankiw observed, "Economists who have
added up all the externalities associated with driving conclude that a
tax exceeding $2 a gallon makes sense." He went on, "By taxing bad
things more, we could tax good things less."
from the issuecartoon banke-mail thisLast week, as the Republicans
continued to hammer away at the President on gas prices, he set off on
an energy-themed cross-country tour. (House Speaker John Boehner
dubbed it a "tour de farce.") The tour, which coincided with a
freakish March heat wave, included visits to a solar plant in Boulder
City, Nevada; an oil field in Maljamar, New Mexico; and the site of a
proposed pipeline in Cushing, Oklahoma. At each of these stops, Obama
touted what he has taken to calling his "all-of-the-above energy
strategy." He said that he favored more domestic oil production and
more solar-power installations, a cleaner environment and a stronger
economy. He made much of the fact that, under his watch, domestic
energy production has steadily increased and that enough new oil and
gas pipeline had been laid to "encircle the earth and then some."
"Since I took office, our dependence on foreign oil has gone down
every single year," the President said in Cushing. "Last year, we
imported one million fewer barrels per day than the year before."
Obama sounded, as he generally does, thoughtful and reasonable, and
the figures that he cited were, for the most part, accurate. Indeed,
as the Times reported last week, dependency on foreign oil has fallen
dramatically in recent years. But, in terms of what matters most, the
President's energy tour was a dispiriting affair. In the course of two
days, he made four speeches. The number of times he mentioned the
major impact of America's energy use—global warming—was zero. In
Oklahoma, he announced that he was expediting the construction of the
southern leg of the Keystone XL pipeline. The announcement made no
sense—except, perhaps, as political theatre. A few months ago, the
Administration refused to allow construction of the pipeline's
northern leg, precisely on the ground that Republicans were trying to
rush the permitting process. The whole point of the Keystone pipeline
is to transport more dirty oil from Canada's tar sands, which goes to
show that you can't be in favor of more pipelines and in favor of a
cleaner environment at the same time. A smorgasbord energy strategy
is, as Joe Romm observed recently on the blog Climate Progress, hardly
any strategy at all: "Just a year ago, 'all-of-the-above' was actually
a standard Republican talking point, so much so that Democrats
routinely mocked it."
What the country needs—and has always needed—is an energy policy that,
instead of pandering to Americans' sense of entitlement, would compel
us finally to change our ways. In addition to a phased-in increase in
the gas tax, it would include a comprehensive, economy-wide tax on
carbon, or, alternatively, a cap-and-trade system. As it turns out,
Mankiw isn't the only senior person in a Republican campaign to see
the importance of a new policy. When Romney was governor of
Massachusetts, he presided over the introduction of one of the
country's first cap-and-trade programs, for the six largest power
plants in the state. And in his book "No Apology" he wrote that
"higher energy prices would encourage energy efficiency." Perhaps,
once he secures the nomination, he can Etch A Sketch his way back to
reality, and challenge Obama to do the same. ♦
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2012/04/02/120402taco_talk_kolbert#ixzz1qKDop3xe
--
Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time.
Have a great day,
Tommy
--
Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time.
Have a great day,
Tommy
--
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