You could work yourself into a frenzy thinking about the damage Bush and Cheney could do between now and mid-January. And I don't put anything past them.
Iran's my biggest worry, but it's certainly not the only one. The renewed push for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is another. Predictably, Republicans in Congress - including our own Randy Kuhl - are insisting that we can get relief from high gasoline prices if we allow drilling in ANWR.
Randy Kuhl promises $2-a-gallon gas from ANWR and offshore drilling. You'd hope that by now, Americans would see through this gimmick. But we're a busy lot, and we're easily swayed by rhetoric. So let's review the facts.
1) Gasoline is cheap.
We can whine all we want; when you factor in inflation, the price of gas is "only slightly higher than it was in 1922," says a recent Slate.com posting by Robert Bryce. Given the increasing demand - "and the increasing costs associated with finding, producing, and refining crude oil" - it simply makes sense that gas costs more, says Bryce. Compare that to the increased costs of maintenance, taxes, and insurance, and gas is a bargain today, says Bryce.
2) ANWR wouldn't add much to our supply: less than 5 percent, in some experts' analysis.
3) Our heavy use of oil contributes to global warming.
It's long past time to get serious about this crisis. But as long as gas is cheap, we'll use more of it. When the price goes up, we start finding ways to use less. (On Slate.com, Bryce notes that Nissan plans to start selling electric cars in the US in a couple of years. The trigger: rising fuel prices.)
4) Our reliance on oil weakens our national security.
In the past, the Bush administration has insisted that we need ANWR oil to improve national security - to lessen our reliance on foreign oil. But given the pittance that ANWR oil would provide, that's a shallow argument. If we really want to lessen our reliance on foreign oil, we'll have to lessen our reliance on oil, period.
5) ANWR oil won't lower prices today, tomorrow, or in the foreseeable future.
The gas-price argument by Bush, Cheney, Kuhl, and others is more than absurd; it's deliberately deceptive. Oil companies couldn't just dash up to ANWR, stick a pipe in the ground, and start shipping free gas to your service station. Estimates are that it would take nearly a decade for oil to begin flowing in ANWR. And an AP report suggests that even at peak production, the ANWR oil would lower the cost of gasoline by only about 50 cents a barrel - not a gallon, a barrel.
Who would benefit from ANWR drilling? Big Oil might. ("In his oil-patch zeal," the Washington Post's Dana Milbank wrote last week, "Cheney sounded more chairman of Halliburton than vice president of the United States.") But the rest of us would gain little.
As with many other challenges, a new president could lead us in changing our ways. We have to do that. The worldwide demand for oil will continue to grow, and we can't keep insisting that we get energy on the cheap.
And, writes Andrew Leonard on salon.com, it seems "increasingly likely that the world has reached that critical point at which it is simply impossible to find and develop new sources of cheap oil to replace what we have already discovered and are daily consuming." We have a chance now, thanks to high gas prices, to move in a different direction. We could explore new energy sources, develop more fuel-efficient cars, increase our reliance on mass transit, reduce sprawl. And we could lead developing countries in doing the same.
The longer we wait, the more damage we do to the environment, to national security, and to our budgets. Just think what things would be like now had we acted 20 years ago.