Whatever happened to “can do”?
America used to be the “can do” country. Now apparently the land of hardy Pilgrims and pioneers often seems to act like sissies who wail and whine instead of solving problems that are fairly trivially addressed. One of those problems is high oil prices. Robert Samuelson:
What to do about oil? First it went from $60 to $80 a barrel, then from $80 to $100 and now to $120. Perhaps we can persuade OPEC to raise production, as some senators suggest; but this seems unlikely. The truth is that we’re almost powerless to influence today’s prices. We are because we didn’t take sensible actions 10 or 20 years ago. If we persist, we will be even worse off in a decade or two. The first thing to do: Start drilling.
It may surprise Americans to discover that the United States is the third-largest oil producer, behind Saudi Arabia and Russia. We could be producing more, but Congress has put large areas of potential supply off-limits. These include the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and parts of Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico. By government estimates, these areas may contain 25 billion to 30 billion barrels of oil (against about 30 billion barrels of proven U.S. reserves today) and 80 trillion cubic feet or more of natural gas (compared with about 200 tcf of proven reserves).
What keeps these areas closed are exaggerated environmental fears, strong prejudice against oil companies and sheer stupidity.
At the moment oil prices look like they are declining or set to decline because of the end of a speculative frenzy and a worldwide recession or near-recession. But the long term trend is clear, and it takes a decade or more to get oil produced from places like ANWR. (The US could have been producing oil from ANWR for several years now but for the 1995 Clinton administration veto of an authorization to do so.) So it’s obvious that companies need to be able to start drilling — or have Americans sunk into the permanent state of “sheer stupidity” that Samuelson suggests?
May 2nd, 2008 at 3:46 pm
…solving problems that are fairly trivially addressed.
But…but…what if something goes wrong?
…have Americans sunk into the permanent state of “sheer stupidity” that Samuelson suggests?
Possibly. Both political parties seem controlled by coalitions of zealots and special-interest kleptocrats, and that’s reflected in the behavior of Congress. Although Presidents 40-42 displayed awareness of the overall national welfare, Bush 43 facilitated the spending binge (during wartime) of the late unlamented Republican Congress.
By and large, our elites are not acting as fiduciaries of the country’s assets. They’re behaving like irresponsible heirs who squander their patrimony; even worse, they’re squandering the assets of future generations.
There is no guarantee that American decline will not accelerate precipitously. Otoh, although I don’t see what’s going to turn things around, the decline is neither inevitable nor irreversible.
(My infinitesimal contribution to the turnaround is to stop this comment’s bewailing & pontificating, and go focus on my business…)