Consumer Energy Alliance

Consumer Energy Alliance (CEA) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization created to help expand the dialogue between the energy and consuming sectors to improve understanding of energy security, more effectively develop and use both renewable and oil & gas energy resources in an environmentally conscious manner, create sound energy policy and maintain stable energy prices for consumers.

When the economy cools, debate over domestic drilling heats up

California, with its vast oil reserves on the one hand and its extensive and scenic coastline on the other, has long been ground zero for the crusade against domestic drilling. Overnight, it seems to have become the site for some of the most levelheaded debating on the topic.

The San Francisco Chronicle recently published “Americans want it both ways,” in which Victor Davis Hanson, a historian at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, highlighted the faulty logic of a community that wants to consume oil but does not want to produce it.

It is, of course, a very clear contradiction that should not even have to be spelled out in a serious editorial. The fact that many of our debates about energy policy seem to skip this basic reality underscores how the benefits of domestic drilling are like the proverbial pink elephant in a room, that everyone sees but no one acknowledges.

Hanson argues that the “not in my backyard” philosophy is not just narrow-minded but could be harmful. After all, where are people more likely to be able to ensure that the oil they consume is developed with respect for the environment: in their backyards or in some distant country that has barely a shadow of the conservation movement here at home?

“If we exploit our own energy carefully offshore and in Alaska, it will mean less sloppy foreign drilling off places like Nigeria or in the fragile Russian tundra to feed American cars and trucks,” writes Hanson. He also mentions all the jobs and money that could be saved if the U.S. produced more oil and imported less.

Anyone who has been following California state politics knows that Hanson’s remarks were prescient. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, seeking ways to close the state’s gaping budget deficit, is seeking to open California waters to new oil drilling projects for the first time in 40 years.

The proposal was immediately met with much resistance, but the opposition was not across the board. Many groups, including some local environmental groups in Santa Barbara, near the site of the proposed new project, expressed a willingness to negotiate.

It’s not entirely clear if Schwarzenegger’s proposal represents the best way to expand offshore drilling in California. What is highly encouraging is that the nature of the dialogue is more open and honest than we’ve seen in years. It focuses not just on the alternative sources of power we need to develop for the future, but on the conventional power that is absolutely essential today. And that sort of honestly that addresses our needs as well as our dreams is, in the long run, the best way to come up with real solutions for protecting our environment, along the California coast, and all around the world.