Who's To Blame For Gas Prices (And What Can We Do About It)?

David Strom recently wrote a column at Townhall.com attempting to explain who we should thank every time we shake our heads at the price of gasoline: Congress.

Americans have been treated to a lot of whining by our elected officials about the high cost of oil and gas these days, but as usual the fingers are being pointed by rather than at the guilty parties.

Left-wingers want to have their cake and eat it too, of course: they simultaneously insist that oil is running out, its use is ruining our environment and should stop as soon as possible, and that oil gas should still be cheap at the pump.

It is the evil oil companies, who keep us addicted to oil while reaping their profits off our helpless selves, who are to blame for all our current ills. Americans, however, are blessed to have plaintiff's attorneys ready to sue the oil companies for causing global  warming, Congressmen ready to rake oil executives over the coals for making money, and yet other Congressmen dedicated to keeping pristine the remaining American wilderness that has oil buried underneath.

How stupid do they think we are? How is it possible to simultaneously wean ourselves from oil and the carbon dioxide emissions that  stems from it, keep oil cheap and abundant, drill for oil absolutely nowhere, and sue oil companies without hurting consumers? Oh, and don't forget to slap a "windfall profits" tax on the oil companies just for good measure.

It's not possible to have all these "good" things together. Instead, we are seeing the consequences of following the anti-oil policies being pushed in Congress. Gas prices have gone through the roof, oil supplies for the future are threatened, and if the lawsuits against "big oil" go through exploration for future supplies will dry up leaving the world with little option but to get poorer over the next few years.

And the unpleasant fact is that a poorer world will be dirtier and less healthy for human beings, and not so great for nature either. Unless we want to concede that the earth would be better off completely without human beings—and just who would judge it so anyway?—then it is time to recognize that both human beings and the earth will be better off the wealthier we become. And for the foreseeable future, that wealthier future will depend upon drilling for oil.

Congress has been standing in the way of that better, wealthier future. By restricting prospecting for and drilling for oil within the United States, Congress has been keeping oil prices higher than they otherwise would be. And while high oil prices will help wean America off of oil eventually, our current experience shows that in the short run they just hurt consumers and help push our economy into a 1970's-like tailspin that will make Americans less, rather than more environmentally conscious.

Oil prices will only drop if oil supplies can increase, and oil supplies can increase only if oil companies are allowed to drill for oil and be handsomely compensated for extracting and selling it.

Congress should be opening up the continental shelf and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil extraction instead of raking oil company executives over the coals for not selling their product below world market price.

Consumers will benefit only if oil companies can extract, sell, and handsomely profit from the sale of oil that is currently under ground. No amount of complaining by Congressmen can change the laws of economics that makes that so.

I believe Strom is right on.  Congress has largely caused this problem by caving to the ridiculous demands of environmentalist nutjobs over the past couple of decades.  They cannot possibly be so stupid as to actually think that it's possible to have lower consumption and lower prices; that sort of logical disconnect with reality belongs to the environmentalists.  Our elected leaders, on the other hand, know full well it's not possible to have both, and that means they intentionally misrepresent the facts for political gain.

I'm not sure which is worse: total ignorant ineptitude, or selfish political gamesmanship.  Either way, it's you and me who get the shaft in the end.

The solution is simple: get more of our own resources.  The Editors at NRO recently addressed this topic, saying:

A decrease in demand [which is happening to some degree] is one natural market response to rising gas prices. The other natural response — an increase in supply — has not been as forthcoming, and the price of oil continues to rise even though Americans are driving less. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is partly to blame for this market recalcitrance; the international oil cartel manipulates supply in order keep oil prices high. But if members of Congress really want to mitigate the effects of high oil prices as much as they claim they do, they could start by letting oil companies bring America's vast untapped supplies to market.

We're not just talking about the Alaskan National Wildlife Reserve (ANWR) — which Congress stupidly keeps off-limits even though proposed oil exploration there would only affect approximately 2,000 of its 19 million acres — though opening just that 0.01 percent of ANWR to oil and natural gas development could supply 5 percent of America's oil per year for 12 years before it starts to decline, according to Energy Department estimates. The Outer Continental Shelf — also off-limits to drilling — likely contains billions of barrels of additional oil and natural gas reserves. While Fidel Castro's Cuba saw no compunction about leasing its share of these waters to the Chinese, the U.S. continues to forbid oil and natural gas exploration in its share.

This is simple economics, really.  Any high school kid should be able to explain it.  By refusing to go get our own resources, we're deliberately harming ourselves.  Or, more accurately, Congress is harming the American people.  Isn't it interesting how we're now hearing the argument that even if we open up ANWR now it would be as much as ten years before we saw any cost benefit at the pump?  If that sounds familiar, it should.  That's the reasoning Bill Clinton used when he vetoed drilling in ANWR back in the mid-90's.  How does that rationale look now, over ten years later when we're paying around $4/gallon?

There is something you can do right now.  Newt Gingrich recently began a campaign that goes well on a bumper sticker: "Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less."  As accurate as it is simple, this is a slogan that can make a difference because it goes along with a petition to Congress to get their butts in gear and do the right thing for American citizens.  The last time I checked, there were almost 400,000 signatures on the petition (after just a few days of being posted online).  To go directly to the petition, click here.  Wouldn't it be cool if the word of this petition got out so widely that literally millions of Americans signed up to demand accountability from our do-nothing loser Congress?

I heard an interview with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell yesterday in regard to the Lieberman/Warner bill currently being debated, and something he said really struck home with me.  He said that even if we accept the premise of global warming just for argument's sake (which we do not!), the bill is still completely wrong.  Throughout America's history, we have solved problems through technology and innovation, and this bill would penalize and tax precisely those things while effectively shutting down the world's #3 oil producer: the United States.

There is a lot of deception and misinformation going around about global warming, oil, and the current legislation.  These lies and deceits need to be cleared up so that we can face the tough decisions that lie ahead of us as a nation and leader of the world.  I'm doing my part by sharing the facts with this blog.  You're doing your part by reading this blog and educating yourself on the facts.  We both need to tell others about the truth of the matter.

Your next assignment: sign up on the petition, and spread the word about it.  Who knows what a few million signatures can accomplish?  Let's find out.

There's my two cents.