US Congress members return to work this week, yet evidently many House Republicans made pilgrimages back to Washington DC during summer recess to stage an “Energy Speak-In.” Republicans decided to wage a non-stop “drill, baby, drill” monologue to push for a House vote on lifting a ban on oil drilling in all of the USA’s viable shores.
On September 5, Congressmen Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD) and Jim Marshall (D-GA) published an editorial piece in the Washington Post stating their case for opening up ANWR and other offshore drilling sites.
The Congressmen argue that drilling should be authorized only if future oil and gas drilling leases require that the lion’s share of the revenue captured is used to develop renewable energy initiatives. In addition, they assert that the current expectation that individual host states retain a portion of the revenue should be discontinued and instead those funds contribute to the pot for renewable energy projects.
Under their proposed strategy, Bartlett (who Cooler Planet has written about before) and Marshall envision our country is weaned off of foreign oil within a few decades and relies primarily on solar and wind power with a bit of nuclear power and biofuels (made from waste products) added to complement our overall energy mix. They write, “we hope this [oil] price crisis prompts the adoption of a strategic plan to use the remaining value of our federally owned oil and natural gas reserves to fund a clean, affordable and independent energy future for America, a goal worthy of short-term environmental concessions and risks.”
Their plan sounds balanced and reasoned though likely faces many a political hurdle. Let’s hope that during the Republican’s summer Energy Speak-In other Representatives voiced similar sentiments to the ones presented by Bartlett and Marshall in their editorial. Moreover, when actual energy-related legislation reaches the House and Senate floor this autumn, those bills substantially favor renewable energy initiatives.
