One thing that rarely gets enough attention in the debate over drilling for oil (which I cannot believe) is the fact the it is a finite resource. So, when Obama announces that he will open up vast swaths of ocean to offshore drilling, it makes me cringe. Beside the fact the oil won’t start flowing from the wells until 2017 with full capacity coming online by 2030 (which is 100,00 barrels per day – 1/1,000 of the total daily consumption) and that millions of acres of previously leased ocean have not been explored because of its expense, oil will eventually run out – nytimes.com. We cannot drill our way out of that fact. Instead of focusing on finding new supplies of conventional energy we need to look at alternative energies and increase efficiency. Increasing efficiencies alone would dramatically cut our oil imports, more than any offshore drilling could provide. And it would do it in a shorter period of time.
One positive step is the recent announcement that the Obama administration will raise the average fuel standard to 35.5 mpg – nytimes.com. Funny how he coupled both of these decisions together. He doesn’t want to make anyone too upset. Earth to Obama: you are going to have to make some people upset if you really want to be the president of change. You did it with health care. Didn’t that feel good?