Our View - Sunday

OIL: IT'S THE NEW RAGE
Politicians, public come to senses

   It was a presidential campaign about war, race relations, personalities, trust and nebulous "change." It was the kind of political contest voters indulge when everything is good at home, and they have the luxury to worry about the country's foreign policy and ethereal social and environmental causes.

   Not any more. A few hundred-dollar fill ups at the pump, and just plain American folks are ready for a new campaign theme: oil - where can we get it and how fast?

   Suddenly, in a year that seemed fail safe for any Democrat anywhere, there's a fly in the ointment. Democrats have worked for years to achieve ridiculous, unfathomable oil prices and they finally have their wish. They have blocked every major oil exploration effort our country has made, going so far as to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge - 19 million acres of land few Americans ever see, which is dark most of the year - from the temporary and minimal visual effect of oil rigs.

   Americans have tolerated this for years, buying into almost anything wrapped in green and labeled environmentally correct. That's over now.

   Environmentalism has its place, but as a mainstream fashion statement it has peaked. The downfall will be hard and fast. Remember disco? Remember the Atkins Diet? So will go the mainstream fashion green movement, which liberals from both parties have been willing to exploit. As prices go higher and the working class gets poorer, "global warming" will be seen as the hackneyed phrase that helped usher in hardship. The planet may warm, but Americans may rightly feel they're less to blame than volcanoes, Amazon termites and other humans around the globe.

   President Bush on Wednesday urged Congress to lift the ban on offshore oil drilling. He called for tapping the vast reserves of oil shale in Colorado, Wyoming and Utah. He called for drilling in Alaska.

   All of the above would represent common sense measures. America is competing for oil like never before against rising economic superpowers, including India and China, that have no intention of placing the cause of environmental fashion above the welfare of cultures that have struggled for centuries to finally get ahead.

   To leaders in those countries, global warming is the luxury concern of America's elite.

   The same day Bush called for drilling, a Zogby poll revealed that nearly 60 percent of Americans favor efforts to increase domestic drilling and refining. Expect the numbers to go up with every price increase at the pump and every trip to the grocery store that causes sticker shock.

   It's not that Americans have suddenly lost interest in doing what's right by the environment. In the same poll, nearly 60 percent said they also support tougher fuel-efficiency standards and other reasonable efforts to reduce oil consumption. In other words, they care about the environment, but not at the expense of feeding their kids. They're not willing to starve for the goals of millionaire politicians who don't care what gas costs.

   It's a big new problem for Barack Obama and other environmental extremists, who have placed their ideological theories about planetary welfare above the need for Americans to get to and from work. John McCain's calls himself an environmentalist, but the $4-a-gallon gas dilemma seems to be moderating his tone. Obama, by contrast, told a Pennsylvania audience just last week: "we can't drill our way out of this."

   It's an old line that makes no sense. Had we been drilling in Alaska, off shore, and mining shale for the past 15 years, we wouldn't have this problem today. People know that, and they don't want to be here 10 or 15 years from now.

   There is no quick fix to the oil crisis and high gas prices. But nobody has proven that Americans can free themselves from oil anytime soon, and the vast majority of citizens will not look favorably on politicians who would continue our dependence on foreign oil for decades to come, on the mere theory that alternatives will work and help us save the planet.

   Pricey imported fuel is bad for this country. America and Mother Earth would be far better off if the bulk of oil burned in the United States were mined and pumped in the United States.

   Soaring fuel prices will finally teach comfortable politicians a valuable lesson: Don't tell working families, struggling to eat, to go hug trees. Oil is what they need, so let the drilling begin.

FOOD SUMMIT DOES NO GOOD

   The United States, Europe, and some Latin American countries did not do themselves proud in the face of a very real world food crisis at the U.N. food summit meeting in Rome earlier this month. Food commodity prices have doubled over the past couple of years, and the World Bank says an additional 100 million people could go hungry this year as a result. Yet petty domestic politics trumped most of these concerns.

   Governments cannot control conditions like drought in Australia or too much rain in the American heartland this spring, that have dampened and threaten to further dampen food production. But mandates in the U.S. and Europe to use more food for fuel in the form of biofuel and ethanol mandates and subsidies have unquestionably contributed to the food crisis.

   Such mandates are already dubious as environmental policy or a way to control climate change. To continue them in the wake of the current food crisis is indefensible on economic and humanitarian grounds. Eliminating them for at least a few years would be the single most constructive thing developed countries could do to alleviate food shortages. Yet the U.S. and Europe - joined by Brazil, which has a huge domestic industry in ethanol from sugar cane - stubbornly refused to reconsider their policies.

   In addition, the U.S. and European domestic farm programs, which unnecessarily subsidize crops, have had the long-term impact of depressing food production in less-developed countries, because farmers in Third World countries can't compete with subsidized agriculture in developed countries.

   Third World nations have complained for years that crop subsidies in developed nations contribute to low farm prices in the developing world. Those low prices make it diffcult, if not impossible, for farmers there to support their own families, let alone others in those poor countries.

   Yet the U.S., which just passed an enormously wasteful farm bill, and Europe, cling to these programs.

   The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization also criticized restrictions on food exports, which restrict world supply and put upward pressure on prices. But countries like Argentina, which have such restrictions in place, show few signs of changing those policies, although some Asian countries seem willing to reconsider them.

   So the world political leaders talked and postured and produced mostly meaningless promises. The U.S. and Europe vowed to continue their destructive farm and biofuels policies. People are likely to starve as a result, but the biofuels industrial complex will thrive on subsidies.

   Disgraceful.