Pelosi dishonest on oil supplies

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is calling on the Bush administration to release part of the strategic oil reserve to spare Americans from rising gasoline and heating oil bills.

Clearly, the California Democrat understands the relationship between supply and price. And yet Pelosi remains staunchly opposed to tapping into America's vast offshore and Alaskan oil pools.
What, then, does she suggest the nation do once it burns through its strategic reserves, which have been aside to protect the country against supply interuptions, and not price spikes. Where will the new supplies come from to moderate prices?

Pelosi also seems to be working against her own environmental agenda. The higher gasoline prices are forcing American motorists into more fuel efficient vehicles, precisely the objective she sought when she helped impose oppressive fuel performance standards on automakers last fall. In driving less, they're also producing less greenhouse gases, another Pelosi objective.

PThe speaker's contradictory positions reflect the nation's dishonest approach to energy.

We say we want to use less oil, and then howl when prices go up. Higher prices are the most effective means of encouraging conservation.

Politicians like Pelosi want to pretend that they can spare individual consumers the pain of their restrictive environmental policies.

That's impossible. Congress has limited oil supply by placing vast stretches of the nation off-limits to exploration, and thus helped drive up the cost of fuel. Congress increased demand for corn by adopting ethanoal mandates, and thus helped drive up food cots.

But don't hold your breath waiting for Pelosi and her peers to accept responsibility for the consequences of their policies.

~From Nolan's weblog at the Detroit News