EDITORIALS
Compromise on energy
Schumer’s drilling-plus-conservation could be basis of a real national policy
Updated: 07/11/08 6:37 AM
The senior U. S. senator from New York deserves to get attention for his “grand compromise” ideas about something resembling a real national energy policy. That’s long overdue, and the current world oil crisis ought to spur action.
Sen. Charles E. Schumer recently has been repeating his suggestion that his fellow Democrats might have to move away from their long-held opposition to energy exploration in America’s oceans and even in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. But only if the Republicans will in turn back away from their obstruction of building a more energy-efficient nation.
“We do have to come up with sort of the grand compromise here, where Democrats sort of hold their nose a little bit and figure out ways to increase supply,” Schumer recently told Newsday. “Frankly, I don’t think this administration can pull it off. . . . But either President Obama or President McCain might be able to do that.”
That would be Barack Obama, the apparent Democratic nominee for president, and John McCain, his Republican counterpart. Schumer’s point is that, while each candidate represents at least some of his party’s traditional views on energy matters, both demonstrate a little independent thinking and, perhaps, willingness to compromise.
McCain, while he lost some of his maverick credibility with a dizzying turnabout to support offshore oil drilling, is much more likely than most Republicans to stress the need for conservation and efficiency. He speaks of offering a $300 million prize for anyone who can invent a super-efficient car battery and $5,000 tax credits for the purchase of fuel-efficient cars.
And Obama, while toeing the traditional Democratic line in opposing offshore drilling and favoring a windfall profits tax on Big Oil, broke with Schumer and many other Democrats in opposing a summer suspension of the federal gasoline tax.
The constant refrain from the Republicans, from President Bush on down, often gives a nod and a wink to reducing the nation’s dependence on foreign oil. But the preferred means of doing that seems to be to produce more oil domestically — offshore, in ANWR, on federal wilderness land, anywhere an oil executive’s divining rod might dip.
In the long run, given the threat of climate change (which both McCain and Obama accept as real) and the relatively tiny slice of the world’s oil under American land (which no one disputes), that’s no answer.
In the short term, though, increased drilling might indeed be necessary, as we wait for alternate forms of energy to come on-line. Democrats might shift their emphasis from banning increased drilling to making sure a new generation of exploration is properly designed, policed and taxed.
Now that Republicans have chosen as their candidate someone who rejects the old Dick Cheney line of conservation being only a personal virtue, and Democrats are rallying behind a nominee who stresses a post-partisan approach to government, we might be able to have some of the best of both worlds.
