New Drilling

In contrast to Barack Obama's efforts to provide viable alternatives to hefty gasoline consumption, John McCain's idea is that we should make regulatory changes to allow more drilling, and then slather on some additional subsidies (or as he puts it "incentives" since he's against subsidies) to allow for more drilling:

Now there's a coherent case for more drilling. It would say something like "the economic benefits of cheap gasoline exceed the environmental and other harms of massive gasoline consumption." But McCain, whether he realizes it or not, has endorsed a carbon cap-and-trade program that will necessarily reduce consumption of fossil fuels and raise the price of gasoline. If you want cheaper gas, you don't cap carbon emissions. And if you want to reduce carbon emissions, you don't try to reduce the price of gasoline.

But McCain wants political credit for breaking with GOP orthodoxy on climate change, and he doesn't want to bite any of the bullets involved in breaking with GOP orthodoxy on climate change, so instead he's come up with an incoherent mess.

Comments

McSame is a moron just like Bush is.

I really hope all of America wakes up to the fact that it would be dangerous to have McSame as president, because he really is a second Bush.

On the economy, it is so clear that he doesn't know much and doesn't really care that much either. Only the thought of war gets his blood boiling.

And to make matters worse, he is controlled by all those lobbyists who can so easily manipulate him...so he just puts out a hodge podge of policies designed to please the lobbyists special interests.

I used to think that at least McCain cannot be as bad as Bush, but now I don't think that way...McCain would be at least as bad as Bush, and perhaps even worse.

Posted by cn | June 17, 2008 9:41 AM

Your argument doesn't make any sense. If there is oil that is easy and cheap to drill for, with little environmental damage, then why in the world wouldn't we want to drill for it? I'm not saying that this is the case for off-shore drilling. But the pros and cons of this drilling have to do with the financial and environmental cost of the drilling itself. It has nothing to do with gasoline consumption.

Endorsing a cap-and-trade program is a completely independent issue.

If we can drill for more oil cheaply, with little environmental cost, what's the harm?

Posted by Jim W | June 17, 2008 9:43 AM

This man is the worst candidate ever. It is far worse than I imagined. My incredibly low opinion of the media has fallen even lower for falling in the love with this utter moron.

Posted by mpowell | June 17, 2008 9:43 AM

There's not much coherence in the case for more drilling when it would have very little impact on the world price of oil and would be distributed to whichever country has the customers willing pay the most for it.

Posted by Helter | June 17, 2008 9:44 AM

Cap-and-trade would raise the price of a gallon of gas, but it would lower the price of a barrel of oil. Drilling would also lower the barrel price. So from an "energy independence" point of view, combining cap-and-trade with more drilling makes sense--we don't import gallons of gas, we import barrels of oil.

Combining that with cuts in gas taxes makes no sense, though.

Posted by Consumatopia | June 17, 2008 9:45 AM

Not to be ageist or anything, but after viewing that clip it's not clear to me whether McCain is deeply cynical or deeply confused. After 7+ years of "leadership" from a guy who clearly didn't know what he was talking about, I don't get why 40+% of people want to vote for someone whose main qualification is that knows how to throw a good barbecue.

Posted by Jeff S. | June 17, 2008 9:46 AM

You'd want to do a lot more drilling even with cap and trade: Oil is a hydrocarbon, coal is pretty much just carbon: You get a lot more energy per unit CO2 emission for oil than you do coal.

Posted by Brett Bellmore | June 17, 2008 9:47 AM

Does he believe what's saying? He looks and sounds dispirited, as if he knows he's shoveling shit and that it could come back to bite him, but has no choice because the GOP backers don't care for his greener proposals. But here's the worst part of this plan: McCain argues it would provide short-term relief on gas prices, despite the fact exploration and extraction of any new sources would take years. New drilling is the very definition of a long-term endeavor. Either McCain is lying or he doesn't know what he's talking about.

Posted by NHCt | June 17, 2008 9:50 AM

But the pros and cons of this drilling have to do with the financial and environmental cost of the drilling itself.

And the environmental cost of the burning of the resulting oil. Hence the incoherence of wanting more drilling and pretending to care about climate change, too.

Posted by Consumatopia | June 17, 2008 9:55 AM

Jeff S.:
Because 40% of the country can't see past their ideological blinkers.

Posted by Joe Klein's conscience | June 17, 2008 9:55 AM

For someone that graduated at the bottom one percent of his class of 890 something students, John McCain sure has come far in the world. I'm not exactly reassured when he talks out of both sides of his mouth on the cap and trade issue and then appears confused when he's asked about where he stands on the issue.

Posted by Morg | June 17, 2008 9:59 AM

Either McCain is lying or he doesn't know what he's talking about.

It can't be both?

Posted by Joe Klein's conscience | June 17, 2008 10:00 AM

Consumatopia,

So, you think we should also stop extracting oil from existing wells? And Saudi Arabia should do the same as well?

Posted by Jim W | June 17, 2008 10:02 AM

I think in the end energy policy has to be focused on two time points. medium term and long term. to be able to pass really substantive legislature that will shift the way we live in the long term, i think us liberals are going to have to make some concessions on drilling. even if all the oil off the coast or in anwar is just a drop in the bucket the political capital we gain from making those concessions could go a long way in terms of transforming the way we produce and consume energy in the long term.

Posted by the centrist | June 17, 2008 10:04 AM

If you want cheaper gas, you don't cap carbon emissions. And if you want to reduce carbon emissions, you don't try to reduce the price of gasoline.

Unless you want to keep from sending billions of dollars to hostile or unstable regimes in the Middle East and would rather keep more of it going to domestic oil production.

There is a big difference between high gas prices because the Saudis are extorting us and high gas prices because the government is collecting a fat tax on cheap underlying oil.

Posted by right | June 17, 2008 10:12 AM

My friends, I want to make soothing noises to the bulk of you while insuring that my financial backers make out like bandits. This is called leadership.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | June 17, 2008 10:35 AM

As the comments have pointed out, the truly incoherent part of this message is the "gas tax holiday." That's really one of the most trasparent and counterproductive panders in a long time. He should be mocked endlessly it.

Posted by Leo | June 17, 2008 10:35 AM

His gas tax holiday has the premise that the elderly and middle class drive more than everyone else. So you see, it's not simply a pander. It's lying broadly based pander.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | June 17, 2008 10:40 AM

C'mon, Joe. With your conscience and all, I'm surprised you don't include the 40% on the left as unable to see through their ideological blinkers. So that's a total of 80% who are ideologically blinkered. The fight is for the middle 20%, as always.

But maybe you can't see that due to your blinkers. The fact that you don't even consider your own blinkers is amusing. It makes me laugh. You're funny.

Posted by 'Das Racism | June 17, 2008 10:43 AM

First, this is a big deal in Fla. The present Nat'l Moratorium was engineered by Gov JebBush and Sen Martinez (among others). Florida has been generally conceded to McCain but this has created a major opening if the Dems can grab it.

Second, a reasonable person could make the argument for shared sacrifice and against parochialism and conclude that Floridians 'ought' to accept off-shore drilling. That civic morality would confront incredibly strong financial interests wrapped in irresistable eco-clothing.

So if Repubs are serious about 'solving' our energy problems--I suggest a 'grand bargain', that we go full bore with domestic exploration and exploitation with very active environmental oversight. Build the damn refineries to replace the ones the oil companies voluntarily closed. Do it all. And sell the gas at $5/gallon minimum and tax the crap out of it. So we could fund a huge national project to simply stop using petroleum unless nothing else will work.

In the future, uses like air travel and plastics/pharmaceuticals could be the only 'reasonable' things to do with petroleum. Using it in a car will seem like a horrible extravagance. That's the future and America should get there first.

Posted by JohnMcC | June 17, 2008 10:50 AM

There's not much coherence in the case for more drilling when it would have very little impact on the world price of oil and would be distributed to whichever country has the customers willing pay the most for it.
Posted by Helter

I'm afraid the incoherence is with you if you think that reducing our reliance on dangerous countries for our oil and lowering our trade deficit by hundreds of billions doesn't make a case for drilling. And conservation. We have a 40-50 year transition and despite all the R&D done in Europe and Asia on lefty's beloved solar and wind - they remain marginal, unreliable, and horrendously expensive alternative energies.

And the same environmentalists that urge the proles to conserve or spend 50K on a hybrid tend to be the same "Progressive" ones that want mass immigration and Open Borders. 366 million in 2030. 434 million in 2050. Going from 225 million in 1973 to 300 million today more than wiped out all conservation gains. Our per capita use is lower, but our net demand is 20% higher, driven purely by the population growth that other nations have avoided...

That 40 year transition time means we will need all the oil we can find, begin building all the CO2 free nukes we can build.

And oil and for that matter food and tin ore, will only be distributed if the people that have it wish to maintain a global market, and not subsidize it - as many petroleum exporters and many food producers elect to do for their citizens. America has so far elected not to do that, but there is no law that says our people must export if someone simply offers a higher price.
(However, oil and China driven trade deficits have weakened the dollar so badly that 40% of the increase in oil prices since 2005 is pegged to the weak dollar that oil is traded in which requires oil exporters to raise price simply to compensate for the dollar heading into the toilet. So in a roundabout way, the dollar will rise once the world realizes the US is serious again about developing energy supply, and that dollar rise will lower oil prices.)
But having the spare resources, including developing our abundant coal and oil shale and nearby Venezuelan bitumin - means we will probably be able to stop oil from dounbling and quadrupling again provided we end our 30 year refusal to develop the energy our nation needs.
We should probably keep oil and gas high if we reduce or eliminate our reliance on dangerous Muslim nations, and put the revenue into developing nuke plants, certain wind projects, and solar if the cost becomes affordable.. And conserve like crazy once we get control of our Borders.

Cap and trade, BTW, is headed for failure internationally as too many nations like China have declared it stupid and opted out, and in Europe, it threatens to become a massive new bureaucracy that screws the little guy and rewards the well-connected traders, auction-bidders, and energy speculators. A carbon tax is far more simple.

Posted by chris Ford | June 17, 2008 11:14 AM

And if you want to reduce carbon emissions, you don't try to reduce the price of gasoline.

I agree.

But why did Congress make a big show of bringing oil company execs to testify a few weeks ago and complain to them about high prices?

Posted by Kolohe | June 17, 2008 11:35 AM

"I'm afraid the incoherence is with you if you think that reducing our reliance on dangerous countries for our oil and lowering our trade deficit by hundreds of billions doesn't make a case for drilling."

Oil taken out of American wells goes into the world market just like all the other oil pumped by those dangerous countries, and the estimates are that production won't fill anything close to the daily need for oil. You want to end dependence on foreign countries, you slash the level of oil use to the bone and then rely solely on U.S. production. Everything else is just a lot of hot air.

Posted by Helter | June 17, 2008 11:48 AM

Drill more is going to be a major theme of the Republican campaign. Technically it may make little sense: (we won't produce enough oil to affect the world price, most bans are their because of state & regional opposition, and so federal policy won't change anything etc.). But politically, I fear this could be a big winner for the right.

So what can we do to blunt this potentially dangerous wedge?

(1) Compromise, couple relaxation of drilling restrictions to a serious commitment to conservation.

(2) Emphasize that the restrictions have saved oil that we would simply have squandered while the price was low, until we really need it for post peak oil mitigation. We should sell the left as being the economically responsible party here "we saved our resources until the time of greatest need".

Be realistic about the effects. We will only produce marginally more, i.e. not enough to offset depletion. All drill rigs are already in use, the only effect of relaxed regulation is that they will be drilling in more promising spots. Any new production will be years away, and not enough to make a significant difference..... But, we are NOT against American owned oil companies being able to make a profit.

Posted by bigTom | June 17, 2008 1:21 PM

John McC nails it. It is part of the everpuzzling amnesia hole called the Media that the bans on off shore drilling have been attributed to liberal Dems. Well, it would be nice if Liberal Dems had the backbone to stand up for the environment like that - the futility of trying to maintain U.S. energy autarky on oil is as delusional as the idea that we are on the path to victory in Iraq. However, anybody who was politically conscious in 2002 saw President Bush make a big play to re-elect his brother Jeb by assuring florida's beachhouse owners and the tourist trade that Floridian waters wouldn't be pocked with oil rigs.

The media could point this out, and tell the truth. Or they could be led by the nose by Fox newsy spin. Considering that Fox newsy spin is directed at rich white guys, and that the media is run by rich white guys, who then talk to reporters, other rich white guys, who then analyze the news on Sunday shows, rich white guy to rich white guy - I'd guess the Fox newsy spin will be reported as fact.

On the other hand... given the crash of Florida's real estate market today, Floridians might be desperate for an economic shot in the arm, and willing to go for the short term gain of oil drilling over the long term pain of becoming as poor as Southern Louisiana as a result of it.

Posted by roger | June 17, 2008 1:28 PM