HeidiAllen.com

Gas prices are obviously impacting a lot of people and businesses here in the US, but we still have it easy compared to many other countries.

In Costa Rica, gas is currently $4.72 a gallon. In the capital of San Jose, that nation’s most populous city, emergency services will be cutting back from 3 ambulances to 2, because they can’t afford the gas. Emergency calls to EMS will now be prioritized, and ambulances will only be dispatched to the most serious cases.

Taxis are no longer driving around the city looking for customers. Instead, they line up at various locations, waiting for the customers to come to them. When the taxi at the front of the line gets a fare, the rest of the drivers get out and PUSH their cars forward.

All this is going on at a time when Costa Rican president and Nobel Prize winner Oscar Arias has been caught red-handed with a 2 million dollar slush fund made up of government money. Sigh.

And what are we, the world’s biggest consumers, doing about the gas price issue? Apparently, falling for the bull that drilling in environmentally sensitive areas will bring down prices.

This simply isn’t true. See the actual Department of Energy analysis at the end of this post for the facts.

Meanwhile, when I called a senator’s office recently and asked his aide to tell the senator that I support reigning in oil market speculators, he responded, “Oh, so you want to REGULATE the free market?!!!”

“No,”, I replied. “I want to protect the free market and the American people from what the speculators are doing to them. Wouldn’t that be a less costly and faster way to deal with high gas prices?”

He spouted a bunch of talking points that supposedly “proved” me wrong. I researched them after I hung up and discovered that he didn’t have a leg to stand on.

And that’s where we’re at. Talking points versus facts. Given our recent history, don’t expect facts to win out.

US Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration
“Official Energy Statistics from the US Government”

May 2008: Analysis of Crude Oil Production in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

“With respect to the world oil price impact, projected ANWR oil production constitutes between 0.4 and 1.2 percent of total world oil consumption in 2030, based on the low and high resource cases, respectively. Consequently, ANWR oil production is not projected to have a large impact on world oil prices. Relative to the AEO2008 reference case, ANWR oil production is projected to have its largest oil price reduction impacts as follows: a reduction in low-sulfur, light (LSL) crude oil¹⁸ prices of $0.41 per barrel (2006 dollars) in 2026 in the low oil resource case, $0.75 per barrel in 2025 in the mean oil resource case, and $1.44 per barrel in 2027 in the high oil resource case. Assuming that world oil markets continue to work as they do today, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) could neutralize any potential price impact of ANWR oil production by reducing its oil exports by an equal amount.”

2007: Impacts of Increased Access to Oil and Natural Gas Resources in the Lower 48 Federal Outer Continental Shelf

“The projections in the OCS access case indicate that access to the Pacific, Atlantic, and eastern Gulf regions would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030. Leasing would begin no sooner than 2012, and production would not be expected to start before 2017.”

I watched the film Quatemass & The Pit (aka 5 Million Years To Earth) the other night. It was released in 1968, but contains this extraordinary bit of dialogue:

Quatermass: Look Roney, suppose we found that our earth was doomed, say by climatic changes… What would we do about it?

Professor Roney: Nothing. Just go on squabbling as usual.

While one or two brave scientists were already raising the specter of global warming at the time (in particular, oceanographer Roger Revelle, who testified before Congress regarding the threat way back in 1957), almost no-one in the general public had ever heard of such a thing.

In addition to the prescient climate change reference, there’s the added wisdom of Professor Roney’s response. Despite nearly unanimous agreement on global warming in the scientific community (a rare thing), governments, particulary ours, do pretty much nothing (or worse), wasting precious time squabbling.

I was reminded of this today, when I called Texas Senator John Cornyn’s office to ask him to reconsider his stance on opening up environmentally sensitive areas to drilling under the mistaken notion that this will lower prices at the pump. First, no-one answered the phone after repeated calls. Finally, an aide picked up. It was immediately clear to me why calls weren’t being anwered.

Usually, when you call a Senator or Representative’s office, the aide takes down the reason why you’re calling and some proof that you’re a constituent, like your zip code. And that’s it. But this aide wanted to debate me.

I went along for a little while, but finally asked that he please just pass my comments on to the Senator. I’m doubtful that he will, but at least he can’t claim (as has happened in the past) that Texans don’t care about the issue, because no-one’s calling.

Sigh. Wouldn’t it be nice if our governments would come together, stop squabbling, and do something about what is very likely the most serious threat that humankind has ever faced?