Offshore drilling an illusory solution

Michael Short, Las Vegas

Sunday, Aug. 10, 2008 | 2:04 a.m.

With gas prices as high as they are, it’s tempting to get into a “drill anywhere and everywhere” mode to find more oil. Unfortunately this will solve neither our short-term nor our long-term energy problems.

If we were to end the ban on offshore drilling, it would be decades before we’d see an effect:

A 2007 Energy Department study found that access to coastal energy deposits would not add to domestic crude oil and natural gas production before 2030 and that the impact on prices would be “insignificant.”

So if we move ahead with offshore drilling, the results will be a long time coming. And even then they’d likely reduce the price of a barrel of oil by only a few dollars (and reduce the price of gas by only a few cents per gallon).

We could spend the next two decades trying to feed our oil addiction — or we could use that time to focus on the development of new energy sources, increasing conservation, and the concurrent improvement of the health of our species and our planet.

Risking our coasts and natural environment is the fool’s route, the one that seemingly gets us off the hook but leaves our children in an even worse predicament.

It may seem counterintuitive, but energy experts interviewed by Time magazine have backed Barack Obama: We would, in fact, save more fuel each year by inflating our tires than if we drilled off our coasts.

Who knew the tire gauge was mightier than the drilling rig?