Drilling our way to Cowboy Heaven

Why CAN’T we drill our way to Cowboy Heaven?

One: It won’t work

Times are treacherous. Major banks and investment houses have lost their footing, and real wages have not risen for middle Americans in over eight years. The good news is that there are opportunities in solutions to global climate, fiscal and political challenges. Drilling fixes none of these, and may well postpone real action until we no longer have the choices we have today.

Two: It won’t work.

It’ll take ten years for starters, and we’ll still be sending $700 Billion (what T. Boone Pickens calls the greatest transfer of wealth in history) to unstable countries that don’t have our interests in mind. By refusing to acknowledge the reality of an oil depleted future, we face continued international crisis abroad, along with a fatal ennui at home about the real initiatives needed to keep us competing effectively in a global marketplace.

Three: It won’t work.

If we drill, we produce a few jobs – many in Alaska if we drill ANWR. But the job revolution promised by windmills and solar farms spread up and down the Midwest, and the infrastructure to transport that energy to where it is needed, will be put aside while we wait for that miracle flow of oil. Concerned Unions, like The United Steel Workers, have been lobbying big time for state-side “good jobs” (meaning jobs that pay enough so that the worker doesn’t have to go into debt to pay medical bills). If we are really committed to combating “outsourcing” by bringing jobs home, then drilling for oil won’t work.

Four: It won’t work.

The US has, for many years, effectively subsidized the US Auto industry by keeping CAFÉ (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards unrealistically low in the face of clear evidence of a coming fuel crisis. This has stifled innovation in US automakers, and lead to cars that do not sell well here, let alone to Europe or China’s 1.3 billion consumers. Current legislation will make US cars in 2020 as efficient as European cars have been for several years (35 MGP), so we are unlikely to be competitive again for many years – if ever. Drilling may keep us believing that we can continue to drive dragons, but history is not on our side.

Five: It won’t work.

It’s an historical illusion. “Drill baby drill” evokes a return to a time when Americans could forge their futures by hard work and industry. But like all nations, our collective memory is enhanced to tell a story that resonates with our political ideals, but that never existed. The promise of free land out West lured the families needed to populate the Louisiana purchase to make it stable for development. Most were urban dwellers totally unprepared to actually farm that land, or survive cold winters and rainless summers. Then, as now, a few were very lucky and made a lot of money, and the rest did not. Many straggled back east, leaving dead spouses or children in the planes of Texas, the hills of Arkansas, and the rivers of the Mississippi delta.

The problem with the myth is that our very fear dulls our ability to live up to the myth: to forge the next generation of solutions to climate change and globalization. Like those in Russia who romanticize Communism while forgetting the gulags, we turn our backs on solutions needed to balance free markets and the need for collaborative solutions. The reality is that the past won’t work. We can be better than that.