No point in re-inventing the wheel, so on the "drill drill drill!" scam, I will direct you to Jim Kunstler and his recent correspondence with the oil industry expert Matt Simmons.
Let’s also be clear why oil prices are falling: the market believes the U.S. is in a recession and it will be a nasty one.
Unfortunately, they know we’re stupid. To watch five minutes of CNN reveals their strategy. Oversimplify, deflect, and scapegoat. It’s a strategy that the American right has used with stunning success over the past couple generations.
Sometimes I get into global warming discussions with people who are not ideologues or industry hacks. They roll their eyes and mutter “Al Gore” as if that explained everything. While we laugh at the 9/11-as-an-inside-job conspiracy theory, the one about liberal scientists inventing global warming is almost conventional wisdom.
Cornucopians, supply-siders, libertarians, and Randian hyperindividualists so dominate our discourse that it’s nearly impossible to find a contrary view. This is how our politics gets shoved to the right while we liberals scratch our heads. Millions of Americans can barely afford their health-care premiums but are convinced a single-payer system would mean six-month waits for bypass surgery.
The right has already won the drilling debate. The average American would sooner see ANWR become an industrial wasteland than pay a quarter more a gallon of gas. Point out that it would take a decade or so to see even a nickel’s drop in price, and you’re spoiling the newly minted consensus reality. Shame on us.