Politically it’s probably a smart move: even if it doesn’t win any smiles and handshakes from Republican Congressmen it looks like a sensible move. In terms of energy policy I’m not sure it helps given how much time it will take.
You snark, but that’s pretty much exactly what the Republican respondent to the State of the Union address called for:
Likely not what he meant, but it was a bit of a head-scratcher at the time.
There’s some stuff missing from our discussion. Pubbies like to talk about risk-taking entrepreneurship, but in practice they like to cushion risk with tax breaks and other goodies. That way, if it goes south, the investors don’t lose that much. And if it works out well, reliable donors to the Pubbies do well and are appropriately grateful.
It terms of spin, is it “permit” the drilling or “encourage” the drilling?
Maybe it sounded snarky but my comment was sincere. If Republicans think domestic oil will solve our short term energy problems, fine, lets drill it up and use it so we can move on.
Drill it and burn it, releasing the greenhouse gases? Is that worth “moving on to a meaningful discussion”? Or are you assuming that’s inevitable anyway?
Wow…I haven’t seen so much support for drilling from the left since, well, never. Is it just because Obama proposed this that many here seem willing to drill at home? What happened to the “it will take at least 10 years so it will not help” and, “the amount of oil we can get will do nothing to affect the price of oil on the global market” attitude during the Bush years. With the exception of BrainGlutton I don’t see a lot of consistency here.
I hope that the benefits (in terms of greenhouse gas reductions et al.) outweigh the costs here. I hope, but I doubt. The only other alternative is to sit on his hands for another election cycle or two, until he has 60 friendly Senators on his side (which wasn’t even the case when the current Congress first convened-before the Mass. special election that is).
Several people, including me, have posted what sound (to me) like comments on the pandering that Obama is still doing toward the Republicans. We’ve already seen what pandering for Republican cooperation yields. I don’t know why the administration is bothering.
I don’t support the move but I support Obama. I don’t think we’re at the point in which we need to drill, but I applaud that he’s doing it in a pragmatic way. I may not agree with him, but I agree that he has looked into it and found a suitable compromise.
I would never support Bush in this because I don’t trust his judgement. Bush would simply be doing this to enrich his friends
Obama is not pandering towards the Republicans, but to middle-of-the-road voters. And I think the purpose is obvious: to show that he, and other Democrats by extension, are not radical leftists, but responsible and pragmatic governors.
Or we could use the common sense God gave a head of lettuce and drill in ANWAR. We’re already drilling in the region and have established roads, pipelines and infrastructure. The only difference is moving some of this a few miles into a very small part of a very large park. We’ve already established that the Elk get along just fine with the pipelines.
We are foregoing areas of vast oil wealth while countries like Russia and Cuba drill in our backyard. We can either drill our own oil and profit from the jobs and tax wealth it brings or we can send the equivalent amount of money to unfriendly countries. We are the users of the oil and we should be responsible for the proper mining of the product.
Yes he did. it was a terrible thing, and we were all doomed and stuff. Now Obama wants to do it, and the other side says it’s a terrible thing and we’re all doomed and stuff. In this case, I’d say what goes around comes around.
Even if we don’t need oil, someone will. Becoming an oil exporter would hardly be a major catastrophe.
As if we live over lakes of the stuff. How long will it take for domestic drilling to no longer be profitable? 10, 20 years?
I guess I am assuming fossil fuels will entirely be used up eventually, what non replensihing natural resource isn’t?
It will take years to get into production (they are going to have to allow exploration first, and then, after they identify the fields, they will have to put in the infrastructure to drill and transit the oil back to the refineries) and the amount of oil we will get out of it will do nothing to affect the price of oil either domestically or the global markets, nor to substantially cut our dependence on foreign sources. 
What it will do, however, is inject the economy with capital and jobs (and, of course, it will provide increased tax revenue to both the local states and the federal government…which is probably the key point). I think it’s a brilliant move on Obama’s part, even if it will piss off some of the left wing (who are pissed at him for other things like his possible stance on nuclear energy and even the health care bill). Frankly, I think Obama is trying to position himself to be like Clinton (hopefully without all of Clinton’s foibles) but stealing the Republican’s thunder, putting them into false positions (by making them come out against stuff that they were for before), and generally playing to the countries center while still keeping enough of his base in the loop to continue supporting him. Actually, I think that Obama has already one upped Clinton by wising up MUCH faster than Clinton did (he’s already accomplished MUCH more in his first term than Clinton did).
Is this going to solve America’s energy issues? Hell no. Is it going to make us less dependent on foreign oil? Um…not a chance. Is it going to make the Greens happy? Nope. Is it going to play well to the US center and general populist sentiments? Yeah, definitely. Will it inject capital and jobs into our system? That’s really the point, ehe?
-XT
I agree it is a shrewd political move and I doubt any on the right will have a problem with it. Yes, they are already bitching about Obama not going far enough or still keeping certain areas off limits but that is a far cry from disagreeing with Obama that we should move forward with drilling.
That being said, we will not be in a recession forever. In fact, we may well be in another recession by the time the first drop of oil is extracted. I don’t understand Obama supporters, or those who are generally opposed to drilling at home, being in favor of this. When the economy turns around will these people suggest that we stop the exploration and cap the holes? If you are saying that this decision is good because it creates jobs then I would reply that there are much easier and cheaper ways to do this.
I agree with this.
I’m also glad we’re not drilling ANWAR. Unless there is an economic collapse, we should let another generation of Americans decide what to do with the untapped oil there.
Totally off-topic but: Will oil prices go down now that Obama made this announcement?
It’s as telling as when the left knee jerk disagreed with just about everything Bush did…even when he did something that they would praise Obama for.
I would guess that they agree with Obama in the same way that those in the right agreed with Bush, even when he did stuff that they actually didn’t like. My guess is that most on the left aren’t going to be too keen about this, honestly, but they are going to go along because over all they like the direction he’s moving in, or they see that by moving to the center on some issues (or even to the ‘right’, as they probably see it), he is doing so to enable him to accomplish more, since it will be popular with more than just the left wing.
As for your other point, I guess I don’t get it. Obama is opening up those fields for exploration and exploitation…he’s not nationalizing the oil industry and creating the jobs via government fiat. By allowing private companies to explore and exploit in areas that were previously denied them, he will be enabling companies the opportunities to create wealth AND jobs. Even if he uses government funds to subsidize and defray the risk (and I honestly don’t know if this is part of the plan), I don’t see how there are easier or cheaper ways to create jobs and wealth than allowing for the exploitation of natural resources that are just sitting there untapped.
I doubt the left wing looks at it in quite this way (‘wealth’ being a naughty word), but maybe you could expand on why you think this is going to be a waste, or what would be a more optimal way to create jobs and wealth (and generate new tax revenues) than this?
-XT
Politically, I approve. One of the biggest problems with selling HCR was that all the details were hidden, so it could be sold as socialist Obamacare. With this, there’s less complexity in the plan and less room to weasel by the opposition.
Obama: “Let’s open up some offshore drilling.”
Noise machine: “BOO OBAMA!”
Base: “BO- wait, don’t we like drilling?”
Personally, I’m ambivalent. As a stopgap to tide us over until better energy production methods become available (coughnucleargoddammitcough), it’s acceptable, but we really need to start weaning ourselves off oil.