Bush’s same old rhetoric

Friday, May 2, 2008 | 2:09 a.m.

This week President Bush dusted off his calls for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, saying it would help lower the nation’s skyrocketing gasoline prices.

Speaking from the Rose Garden on Tuesday, Bush said if Congress “is truly interested in solving the problem” it could “send the right signal” by increasing oil exploration on U.S. soil, starting with ANWR — a move that “likely will lower gas prices.”

What’s more, the president said opposing drilling in the nation’s largest wildlife refuge means “you don’t care about the gasoline prices that people are paying.”

In reality, energy experts say pumping the refuge’s estimated 11 billion barrels of oil could take at least a decade and would not result in lower gasoline prices — now or in the future.

Bush also said to control rising energy prices, the United States should be building new oil refineries and nuclear power plants and ease environmental restrictions that require power plants to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

These policies are nothing new, of course; Bush has been promoting them since entering the White House in 2001. As he trotted them out again this week, oil companies BP and Royal Dutch Shell announced they had turned a record $17 billion in profits in the first quarter of the year.

“Only President Bush could allow Big Oil to write our nation’s energy policy,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said.

After nearly eight years of unsuccessfully promoting these shortsighted approaches — they failed even when Republicans controlled Congress — it would seem that Bush would get the message. The United States needs an energy policy that provides affordable alternatives that don’t pollute and destroy our land, water and air.