The Same Old Drill

Too little, too late, too clever and for the wrong reasons. That's a good way to describe President Obama's decision to allow a little offshore drilling. Of course, most of the environmentalist base of the Democratic Party sees it the other way around: too much, too soon (since "never" is their preferred timeline), too dumb but for the right reasons. Obama justified his decision to allow drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, the southern Atlantic and some coastal regions of northern Alaska on the grounds that it would create jobs and serve as a "bridge" to the carbon-free Brigadoon we've long been promised. The reality is that his decision was entirely political. Aiming to win vital Republican support in the Senate for some kind of bipartisan cap-and-trade legislation, he lifted the ban where the polling was in favor of doing so. Sound science, energy policy and economics were the last things on his mind. On that, there's widespread consensus...more