Sometimes the dots just don't get connected.
It used to be they might not get connected on the same page of the same newspaper, but now we're more apt to get our news delivered one headline at a lightning flash time. The disconnection can be overwhelming.
The headline today is President Bush Lifts Executive Ban on Offshore Drilling (in the Washington Post's formulation. The reasons cited: High gas prices, and politics. The rationale: Drill more oil domestically, and eventually you get cheaper gas at the pump, and highlight the issue now and you favor Republican John McCain over Democrat Barack Obama in November's presidential election.
The story's a wee bit bigger than that, though.
Start by connecting it to another, smaller story making some news today, Polar base evacuated as ice melts early, in the CNN formulation. Russian researchers abandoned their outpost on an Arctic ice floe more than a month ahead of schedule because the ice is melting so rapidly. Some have predicted the North Pole will go ice-free for the first time in history this summer, a year after the most extensive melt ever witnessed.
Drilling for oil means burning oil, means releasing carbon dioxide means more global warming means more ice melting. Consider those dots connected.
President Bush, while agreeing with world leaders last week that we ought to collectively cut our greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2050 (50% from what level? they didn't say), has otherwise kept his administration's hands off the switch and tied behind its back. The capstone of this achievement of stalling came last week, when the EPA announced it would continue to take public comment on the potential health impacts of global warming for a few more months, effectively ensuring that the next president would be the decider when it comes to carbon dioxide regulation.
It was 1990 (2 years after Congress was first warned about global warming, incidentally) that President Bush's father, George H.W. Bush imposed the executive branch ban on offshore drilling. Congress has its own ban, and seems content to keep it.
The decision whether or not to drill for oil off the coast of the United States is a question of long-term strategy, sort of ...
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