Tom Friedman has an excellent column here in Sunday’s New York Times on the energy policy swindle the Performing Monkey-in-Chief is pulling on the American people.
Friedman points out that Bush is trying to use high gasoline prices and dissembling rhetoric to strongarm Congress into passing legislation to lift the ban on drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). Even for an administration that seems to redefine “chutzpah” on a daily basis, this is a bit much.
The reality, as Friedman observes, is that drilling in ANWR will do little, if anything, to help the average American consumer–but it will please Bush and Cheney’s friends in the oil industry, who have wanted to drill in ANWR for decades.
In the meantime, Bush and his Republican allies have done nothing to extend vital renewable energy tax breaks that will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. Friedman’s reaction: “It is hard for me to find the words to express what a massive, fraudulent, pathetic excuse for an energy policy this is.” Amen, brother.
The fact is that one of the main reasons gasoline prices are so high is that China has increased its oil consumption by over 1 million barrels a day since 2003, the year it replaced Japan as the world’s second biggest oil consumer (with India nipping at its heels). See here and here. During the same time, worldwide oil exports have fallen off by over 1 million barrels a day. Little known fact: Iraq is reponsible for most of that decline, because oil production in that country collapsed amidst the violence and political turmoil following the U.S. invasion. See here, here, here, here, and here; and; for a prophetic 2004 article by MarketWatch’s late columnist Paul Erdman, see here.
In other words, Bush is directly responsible for the oil-producing world’s inability to keep pace with demand. The Iraq War has been so badly mismanaged that you almost have to ask yourself whether Cheney’s and Rumsfeld’s ultimate goal in invading the country and occupying it with a woefully inadequate force was to create a situation in world oil markets that would enable the Republicans to open up ANWR. Which, of course, is ridiculous.
Or is it?
