Sometimes, the missing ingredient a heated debate needs is a healthy cupful of common sense. Let’s consider a relevant example: The rising cost of gasoline in the United States.
Currently, we’re aware that the price at the pump keeps going up and up, and this increasing cost is having adverse affects on our lives. For many of us, these increasing gas prices are dictating how often we can drive our car, what vacation trips we can take, when and where we can dine-out, and the types of household, clothing and food purchases we can make.
The republican candidates offer two main solutions to the problem. First, they suggest that the United States government should give American oil companies permission to drill for more oil in the United States. And second, they suggest, that the United States should allow the construction of several pipeline projects that will bring more oil into the United States. (The Keystone Pipeline Project, which will bring oil from Alberta, Canada to Steele City, Nebraska; and the Gulf Coast Project, which will extend from Cushing, Oklahoma to Nederland, Texas are two of them.) Obviously, the republican presidential candidates see “acquiring more oil” in the United States as the solution to the problem of rising gas prices. However, when you look at all the facts concerning American companies use of the oil they’re acquiring, it becomes clear that the republican candidates’ solutions are shortsighted.
Oil acquired and refined in the United States, by American Companies, are sold to the highest bidder worldwide: The countries with consumers that are willing to pay the highest gas prices get the oil. Producing more oil in the United States simply means American oil companies will have more oil to sell to consumers in other countries that are willing to pay higher prices for it. (Let’s keep in mind: An oil company’s bottom line is “profit” -- not “patriotism!”)
Common sense suggests that decreasing our dependence on oil is the real solution to the problem. Creating a wide variety of energy options, including efficient mass transit systems, is the long-term answer. Any other this will simply result in more of the same: Enormous profits for the oil companies, and enormous pain at the pump for consumers.
By
James A. Porter
