Nancy Pelosi may finally allow a vote on offshore drilling. Pelosi and House Democrats have been taking a lot of heat over their stonewalling of a bill that would allow offshore drilling in spite of the overwhelming public support. So it seems that she’s finally backing down but she’s not going to give in without getting something she wants.

Pelosi rejected holding a vote on drilling before the House adjourned for its five-week recess on Aug. 1. In a CNN “Larry King Live” interview Monday night, she said “we can have a vote” on offshore drilling, “but it has to be part of something that says we want to bring immediate relief to the public and not just a hoax on them.”

Among other provisions, Pelosi said she would like a requirement that electricity be produced from renewable sources such as wind and solar energy and the release of some oil from the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve as an immediate brake on prices.

I think that last line is particularly interesting considering gas prices have been coming down for the past few weeks. The price of oil made a steep drop with just the announcement from President Bush that he was rescinding the executive order creating the moratorium on offshore drilling. Likewise, if Congress announced a bill allowing offshore drilling, even if we weren’t going to see a drop of oil for 7 to 10 years, we’d see an immediate effect in the oil futures market and we’ll have an immediate drop in the price of oil.

In the end, in order to be more energy independent, we’re going to have to approach this from a lot of different angles. We need to increase oil production domestically. We’re going to need to find alternative energies that will benefit from economies of scale and invest in them. We need to create more nuclear power plants. None of this has anything to do with being “Green”. It has everything to do with national security and being self sufficient in the things that are most critical for our way of life. It’s not enough to wait and wish for a new “big thing” that’s going to solve all of our problems and do nothing until then. That’s what Obama wants to do.

The thing is, Democrats and their environmentalist supporters are actually excited and want the price of oil to skyrocket. They want people to burn less oil and the best way to do that is by making it too expensive. They want people to stop buying pickup trucks and SUVs and boats and ATVs. They really don’t care what it does to the economy, to the price of food, or to our quality of life. That’s why you see the tyranny of the minority in this particular area where Pelosi prevents a vote on something that 75% of the American people want. It just goes to show that they don’t really believe that we know what is best for the country but that they do and unless it affects their power, they’ll snub what we want so they can save us from ourselves.

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Posted in Energy Politics by Josh Ferguson No Comments Yet