Like other conservatives in the out-of-power Republican Party, Michele Bachmann has a rocket left to ride this election year: public dismay and outrage over fuel costs.
And ride that rocket she has; from the time she’s spent talking about this issue in any forum available to her, an unaware voter might get the impression that she’s actually got the wherewithal to do something about it. The truth is that she doesn’t have the political chops to get anything done to expand the energy supply. If the decision is made to open up more land for drilling, that will because of something the Democrats in power did—not because of something a back-bencher from the out-of-power GOP said.
But one of the keys to understanding Michele Bachmann is: she’s a demagogue, not a leader. A demagogue is a person who finds out what political base is for, and then adamantly and passionately presents that view as if it were her own: regardless of what she knows about the issue, regardless of whether or not that view makes sense.
Does that view—that more and expanded drilling will provide “immediate and lasting relief” and slash gas prices to $2 a gallon makes sense? Is it true? In a piece published on July 19th, a Star Tribune reporter consulted a number of energy experts and found out: no, that is not true. But, as ever, the hard truth never presents an obstacle to Rep. Bachmann and her supporters.
Drill more now, pay less at the pump? Not so fast
http://www.startribune.com/politics/state/25651194.html?location_refer=Outdoors
By PAT DOYLE, Star Tribune
July 19, 2008
With high gasoline prices jolting summer travel and the economy, many members of Congress are pushing to open up an Alaskan wildlife refuge, the nation's deep-sea reserves and oil-shale fields for exploration, drilling and mining.
Few proponents have been more vocal than Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., who says expanded drilling and mining could provide "immediate and lasting" relief and slash gas prices to $2 a gallon.
Yet even as public opinion shifts in favor of more energy production, public and private analysts doubt that it would significantly reduce prices, at least any time soon.
And this is the rocket that Michele intends to ride. An increase in supply, via more drilling, is favored by current public opinion—and to politicians like Michele, that’s all that really matters. It doesn’t matter that more drilling will not stop energy prices from spiraling out of control: what matters is that “supporting more drilling is where the votes are, these days”—and it’s where the contributions from the energy lobby are from, too. And, most important of all: the Dems, who actually do have the power to do something about expanding the amount drilling in world, are likely to cave--at least a little--and expand the drilling because it is to their political advantage to do so in an election year.
If the Dems do cave to the opinion polls, GOP politicians like Bachmann can pretend that they had something to do with it. More drilling is a political winner for demagoguing politicians and for big oil. The only losers in this political equation are the people seeking to protect the environment—and the American public, who will not see any significant lowering of their energy bills as a result of more drilling.
The Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) holds too little oil to reduce gas prices more than a few cents per gallon, and new sources of oil could take decades to develop, according to government analysts.
…Bachmann was expected to visit ANWR today to underscore her desire to drill there. But opening the refuge to drilling "is not projected to have a large impact on world oil prices" or the price of gasoline, said (Philip) Budzik of the Energy Information Administration (EIA). Tapping the refuge could cut the cost of a barrel of oil by perhaps 2 percent and shave 1 cent to 3 cents off the pump price of a gallon of gas, he said.
As for the Outer Continental Shelf, the EIA said it "would not have a significant impact" on oil prices before 2030.
But that doesn’t matter, to the American public. They’re panicked, by rising gas prices and the accompanying inflation. Because they’re panicked, it’s easy to convince them that something that isn’t going to work--must work. When you hear Bachmann and conservatives explaining this issue, they frame to the panicked as “a simple matter of the law of supply and demand”—increase the supply of new oil, and the prices must go down. But that is not the truth; not even a basic economic truth. The problem is that the demand for oil is simply outstripping the available supply, and that will continue to hold true even if you increase the readily available supply.
The other day I read a conservative who argued that “arguing that you can’t drill your way out high oil prices is like arguing that you can’t eat your way out of being hungry.” To understand why that pithy sentiment doesn’t make sense, you understand how the world’s demand for oil is different from someone’s stomach. The stomach has a relatively fixed size; the world’s demand for oil, on the other hand, is constantly expanding, expanding geometrically. Think of it as trying to satisfy the hunger of a stomach that gets geometrically bigger, every day, and you begin to see why an arithmetic increase in the amount of oil production won’t solve the problem.
Referring to oil shale, Bachmann wrote recently that there is "enough energy locked away in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming to offset all of our imports from Saudi Arabia." The Argonne National Laboratory confirms that the theoretical potential is great.
But the EIA said there are major technical hurdles to extracting oil shale. "It is not clear that the lifting [federal restrictions] would have a significant impact on projected oil shale production" for the next two decades.
…Bachmann contends that enacting a comprehensive drilling plan would immediately drive down prices because oil futures traders would anticipate greater supplies in later years. Others doubt this because futures contracts will expire before the new oil becomes available…
Bachmann has another advantage in this policy debate: she doesn’t know anything at all about oil, oil production, or energy. Unlike the experts who keep telling us that more drilling will not lower gas prices, Michele has no personal or technical or professional knowledge concerning these issues. So, as in so many other cases, she does not feel bound by reason, knowledge, the expertise of others, or experience. She can promise $2 a gallon gas to constituents, because she does not feel bound by the facts regarding energy production (though the facts have presumably been explained to her.)
And this is a good issue for her, if all that matters is her career—because the polls favoring more drilling indicate that too many members of the public do not want an energy policy based on facts. And if you want a policy based on popular delusions and the madness of crowds, Michele is definitely your go-to girl. |
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