Drill it, spill it - we don't care.

The subject of off shore oil and gas drilling has been a frequent discussion topic since I've lived in Florida. My particular part of the state has a large proportion of people who have environmental concerns, at least as far as clean water and the health of fish stocks are concerned. Most oppose rapid growth, virtually all of my local friends are extremely concerned about the ongoing discharge of polluted fresh water from Lake Okeechobee into our estuary and are likely to show anger at the sugar industry and even the cattle industry that are sources of much of it and who benefit greatly from the government guaranteed status quo. But when it comes to oil, it's been Drill Baby Drill even despite former Republican Governor Jeb Bush's opposition to it.

Before the BP disaster, one couldn't bring up the subject without becoming an audience for vituperation against "the Enviros" who were the root of the problem: the problem of course being high oil prices. The Environmental bogey men, they insist, are the reason we don't have more and cheaper nuclear power and why our bottomless oil reserves aren't being tapped as cleanly and risk free as turning on the bathroom faucet. It's the Liberals -- it's always the Liberals. They're all Republicans and conservationists without being in favor of conservation and environmentally concerned without being environmentalists. It's doublethink at it's finest.

One would expect that to have changed, and indeed it is changing, but not by as much as you might think. The illusion persists that there are huge amounts of oil off our coasts than can be easily accessed by sticking a straw into the mud and that the sooner we give the right to do that to foreign oil companies who sell into a competitive worldwide market, the sooner we'll be back to 26 cents per gallon. Efforts -- my efforts at least -- to dispel the mythology haven't been worthwhile. There's always some secret reserve or hidden oil field kept under wraps by a malicious government and their familiars: the Enviros.

They're not chanting Drill Baby Drill any more; not out loud at any rate, but Floridians aren't yet solidly behind a Constitutional amendment preventing these operations in Florida waters. The Republican-led Legislature seems firmly against it and abruptly adjourned a special legislative session after 49 minutes Tuesday, squelching Governor Charlie Crist's proposal to put the amendment on the ballot. Florida legislators, of course, get a lot of money from the oil and gas industry and before the false equivalence parade float is pulled out of the shed, the lion's share goes to Republicans.

The House Republican leader, Adam Hasner claims that Crist is making it "all about politics" but of course opposition to environmental responsibility has little else but politics to offer as a basis. It's all about continued profits for the oil industry, continued support for their party (which Crist has recently left) and continued disregard for public safety, health and the common resources of our country.

I don't expect my local friends to put it all together and realize that we' can't preserve our local environment while letting the unholy alliance between oil and government rape the land and water and food sources, but according to the Miami Herald today, support is indeed growing for a permanent ban on at least near-shore drilling. That means at least a few more people are willing to see the picture beyond what is framed by their job, their backyard and their circle of idiocy. It's far too soon -- enormously far too soon to sound like an optimist and in fact I'm convinced that slogans and dogmas, slanders and stupidity will remain the song of the South until the Gulf looks like the LaBrea tar pits and we have to resort to eating termites and grasshoppers while the crops die -- and even then, I'm not sure many minds will be changed in the direction of responsible oversight and regulation by a government agency.

What the hell, might as well just drill!

Quid pro quo

Well no wonder McCain decided to make such an issue out of offshore drilling. It's not because he's ignorant enough to think it's going to bring down gasoline prices -- it's because he got paid to do it. That's unless, of course, you really believe the mystical apparition of a million bucks in his campaign coffer immediately afterward was a coincidence.

Of course the winged monkeys at his campaign headquarters say that's nonsense. Right

Just how stupid do they think we are?

"Beginning this moment, this nation will never use more foreign oil than we did in 1977, every new addition to our demand for energy will be met from our own production and our own conservation. The generation-long growth in our dependence on foreign oil will be stopped in it's tracks right now."

-President Jimmy Carter-

In 1979, Jimmy Carter proposed a plan: He called for consumers to conserve energy; he urged a dramatic increase in the use of solar power; he called for research into alternative fuels; he called for a cap on imported oil. Of course this idea didn't survive the Reagan Revolution. It wasn't long after the Hollywood cowboy took office that all Carters plans were stopped in their tracks and Americans decided to make up for their inferiority complexes by driving ever bigger and more faux-outdoorsy trucks and we all began to use more fuel than ever before. Dick Cheney expressed the Republican sentiment succinctly by saying conservation isn't "the American Way."

I guess honesty and taking responsibility for one's actions isn't the American way either -- not in Republican America anyway. McCain seems to be excluding himself when he tells us the escalating prices of oil are the result of congressional inaction for 30 years. He seems to be excusing Republican Presidents as well. The truth is, the Republicans have been of Cheney's persuasion since Eisenhower, at the very least and John McCain has sat in that Congress for 26 of those years. He’s consistently opposed investments in renewable energy.

The Bush administration of course refused to discuss it's energy policy and took the case for refusing to tell us who was involved in writing it all the way to the puppet Supreme Court.

Of course Gasoline averaged less than $1.50 a gallon when George the Liar and the man from Halliburton took office -- but as usual, it's Clinton's fault, it's the Liberal tree huggers, It's Barak Obama. Well it's not. It's your fault. You elected these people, you made heroes out of pirates and crooks and thugs and you fell for their promises of prosperity through borrowing and consumption and $4 a gallon is the price of your folly.

Now watch as you do it again.

Hummers for ever

Conservatives like to prattle about the sense of entitlement Americans have about many things, but they seem to be no different than the people they chastise when it comes to a sense of entitlement to cheap and plentiful petroleum. Rising fuel costs however, may just bring about the undoing of the Republican empire from within and without unless the public can be convinced that there really is an abundance of oil and that it can be available at your corner Mobil station just as soon as we teach those Liberal Enviros a thing or two about priorities.

Of course we've listed so far to starboard of late that George H. W. Bush would have to be thought of as a radical left wing extremist for having signed a ban on exploration in some parts of the Gulf of Mexico. George the Lesser has undone it and the patron saint of deceit, Newt Gingrich is wagging his forked tongue about a "Drill Here. Drill Now. Pay Less." program to collect a million signatures that would somehow convince congress to "act immediately to lower gasoline prices" by allowing exploration off America's coasts.

Of course reality checks would quickly flock about such words but for the screeching of the addicts wanting oil and more oil and more oil NOW. Still the reality is that we're talking about unexplored areas at a time when explored resources still aren't being used. 83% of the currently leased fields are just lying there for an assortment of reasons including there being no oil where we thought there was.

We really can't be sure how much oil would be available and at what cost, but we can be sure that by the time anything did show up at the pump, the ballooning world demand would gobble it up. What Newt is really demanding could be better described as "poke around in the gulf, maybe drill a decade or so from now and pay pretty much the same if not more." Messiahs do well in such times with their wild promises and prophecies and even when they fail, their disciples don't accept it or recognize the failure. I think we're in times like that. The public just isn't going to accept that we don't own the world, we don't own very much oil and even if we produce more, we will still have to compete to buy what the rest of the world wants. Welcome to Globalization.

It's easier to dream about the kingdom of Hummers forever that we are entitled to by voting Republican. It's easy to sell the idea that faith will bring us the lifestyle we feel entitled to no matter who we squelch to have it: Faith that we can drill our way to eternal oil and borrow our way to eternal prosperity, Faith that we haven't been using it up so fast that we can't solve it by using it up faster.

Energy independence? sounds great in campaign speeches, but it's hokum. According to government estimates, what we would see from our domestic drilling would be about 1% of the worlds demand by the time it could be pumped. It can only provide us with cheap oil if the rest of the world sinks back into poverty and that's not going to happen and we're not going to be able to make it happen.

Still it's easy to make us hysterical - we already are and we're hysterical enough to believe in magic and to stone anyone who doesn't. We may just drill away for decades hoping for the second coming of the Sacred SUV's God want's us to have as his chosen people, while the rest of the world, leaner and more efficient, outpaces us. We may just burn up an appreciating asset to finance our Hummeresque lifestyle and find that we wish to hell we had saved some for later. We might just vote Republican.

Beverly Hills Bonanza

So Jed Clampett found oil on his property and moved to the hills - Beverly Hills, that is. Seems fitting since there's more oil in them hills of Beverly than most people know about. Beverly Center, an eight- level mall near Beverly Hills that attracts a celebrety clientelle, is also attracting oil exploration and drilling people. Indeed, the complex was designed to accomodate a drilling rig or two and the area already boasts dozens of oil wells. High prices, over $140 a barrel today, have the pumps humming day and night and many companies are re-opening old wells and planning to drill some more. Seems "the enviros" aren't so all powerful after all.

Rollin' Rollin' Rollin'
Keep them wells a flowin
Keep them Hummers goin'
Rawhide!

This land is their land

I try not to trust official stories, neither the government's or that of political parties. I'm not entirely sure that the oil fields under the north slope of Alaska or the offshore resources in the Arctic are huge and I'm not sure that the reason we don't tap them extensively is the fanaticism of "left wing environmentalist crazies."

Environmentalists, of course can't be summed up so easily and the idea that the unitary government of oil men would be unable to move without their permission seems flimsy. After all the scarcity of oil serves them well and another huge discovery would slash profits. The standard currency of the world is oil. It props up the dollar which might otherwise be worth very little. How would it serve the people who sell oil to sell it for less? How would it serve the US if OPEC couldn't buy our debt with the dollars it makes?

I try really hard not to trust vast paranoid scenarios and the notion that all the politics of the last few decades is explained by the machinations of oil men, but the arguments of Lindsey Williams have set me back on my heels.


He's been making speeches for years, about the world bank, about the oil cartels and perhaps there are weaknesses in his arguments. Certainly I know oil geologists who strongly disagree. It's far too complex for me to repeat or even to summarize, but listen for yourself. Make some popcorn. It will take you over an hour.

I would like to believe he's wrong, but I think that in essence he's right. I think I've seen new light on our enmity toward Iran. I think the people blaming high oil prices on reindeer huggers are dupes. I think people blaming it on speculators are fooling themselves. I think people blaming it on the Chinese are wrong. I think I'm scared, not because I can't afford $5 gasoline or $10 gasoline, but I'm afraid I've just looked into the mouth of hell and seen Dick Cheney beckoning.

OPEC Day?

OPEC must love Memorial Day. Not because they want to memorialize America's military casualties, but because Americans burn a lot of gas. According to the AAA, 32,100,000 people will travel by cars and trucks for the Memorial Day weekend, up 1.8 percent from last year. About 4.4 million will fly and about 1.9 million will go by train or bus. I and many of my friends will be burning copious quantities of gas and diesel out on the water despite marina prices nearing $4.00 per gallon. My boat is lucky to get 2.5 MPG at cruising speed and of course some of my friends from the yacht club going out to the Bahamas for the week will be getting many times worse than that.

Americans complain about fuel costs but they really don't care enough to trade the Escalade for a real car. The few who benefit from Bush's tax cuts care less. Complaints from those whose lives are adversely affected by gas prices matter little since they'll so eagerly vote against their own self interest if you say "freedom" and 9/11 and "Liberal" enough, it isn't worth accommodating them.

The silliness of the Reaganomic idea that upper bracket tax cuts will enable the upper classes to hire more people and thus benefit the economy can be seen lined up all along the Florida coastline with multimillion dollar, corporate owned yachts registered in the Cayman Islands and other tax havens lined up like Hyundais in a Wal-Mart parking lot. Commodore Gotyatz isn't going to give his employees a raise, he's going to give himself one and will either salt it away abroad or buy a bigger boat from Taiwan or simply run it through the twin Yanmar Diesels humming away below the teak decks in the Caribbean sun.

Of course there are a lot of people who may have to choose between lunch and the gas to get to work, but who cares? This is America, not some socialist workers paradise.