In the novel
1984, George Orwell used the word “
doublethink”
to describe the process of believing two contradictory ideas simultaneously. The concept invites an appropriate but superficial comparison to congressional Democrats’ current approach to gasoline prices.
Idea Number One: High gasoline prices are good. A high price, imposed through federal carbon taxes or carbon caps, is precisely the mechanism by which Democrats hope to curb carbon emissions. We know that this mechanism works because it is already working: As gas prices rise, American consumption is down right now, year over year (a historical rarity). CO2 emissions from gasoline are down from 2007 by a modest 84,000 tons, or roughly 2 percent.
Idea Number Two: High gasoline prices are bad. With constituents irate over gasoline prices that are pushing $5 a gallon, Democrats complain that high prices are a
bad thing. They have dreamed up a number of boogie men responsible for high prices and drafted silver-bullet bills to kill them off.
This is more a case of cynicism than irrationality, however. Democrats only
pretend to believe in Idea Number Two. Their presidential nominee, Barack Obama, lamented in mid-June that high gasoline prices have hurt Americans, but he later gave a much more accurate representation of the party line: “I think that I would have preferred a more gradual adjustment,” he said in an MSNBC interview. It should be noted that the Kyoto treaty calls for emissions reductions some 15 or 20 times as great as those induced by higher gas prices. Its goals would presumably require much higher gasoline prices — perhaps $7 or $8 a gallon, or even more — over a very long period of time.
Given that lower gasoline prices would defeat the purpose of their entire environmental program, Democrats are in a very awkward position on the energy issue. They know it, too. They are caught between their environmentalist allies, well-funded groups with a very loud voice in Washington, and their constituents, working people with almost no voice in Washington. The constituents’ feelings are only now becoming so intense that they are starting to matter. Regular people are noticing that high gasoline prices hit them not only at the pump, which is bad enough, but also through inflated prices for food and other important daily necessities that require transportation or otherwise track the price of oil.
This summer, Democrats have sought some course of action that will appease these constituents — something that gives a false but convincing impression that Democrats are indeed concerned about high gasoline prices. They have proposed several solutions that range from the impractical (“
sue OPEC”) to the irrelevant (
crack down on “speculators”) to the absurd (
“nationalize the oil industry”).
After tilting at these windmills, House Democrats brought the so-called “use it or lose it” law to the House floor on June 26. They charged that, with 68 million acres under lease allegedly containing 4.8 million barrels of crude, domestic producers were consciously sitting on a ready supply of oil — as if today’s exorbitant prices weren’t sufficient incentive to bring as many barrels as possible to market. The Democrats’ bill threatened to confiscate or double the price of non-producing leases. But the Secretary of the Interior already has the authority under current law to revoke leases that are not exploited within five years (it can take that long to explore and get a well running). And as Rep. Gene Green (D., Tex.) remarked in June: “You can’t produce on every acre or even every 100 acres. I think those numbers come from people who don’t understand this business.”
Sure enough, upon further questioning, it was revealed that the 4.8-million-barrel number was made up by Democratic staffers without the involvement of government scientists — a “guesstimate,” as Rep. Rahm Emmanuel (D., Ill.) put it. The bill failed to attain the two-thirds majority it needed, but it would not have lowered gasoline prices anyway.
CONTINUED 1 2 Next > 
