Don't be Dumb, Baby, Dumb, About Drill, Baby, Drill

For all the havoc that $4-plus gasoline has wreaked on Michigan's economy, one would think that a sustained analysis of the energy policies of Sen. Barack Obama and John McCain would have been part of the campaign coverage of our major media.

But with the state of journalism today, that would be like wishing pigs could fly.

The New York Times has come to the rescue with an outstanding analysis of why McCain's drill-drill=drill policy is a dead-end. Tom Friedman's column, titled "Making America Stupid," sums it up excellently.

Here are a few key grafs:

"Imagine for a minute that attending the Republican convention in St. Paul, sitting in a skybox overlooking the convention floor, were observers from Russia, Iran and Venezuela. And imagine for a minute what these observers would have been doing when Rudy Giuliani led the delegates in a chant of 'drill, baby, drill!'

"I’ll tell you what they would have been doing: the Russian, Iranian and Venezuelan observers would have been up out of their seats, exchanging high-fives and joining in the chant louder than anyone in the hall — 'Yes! Yes! Drill, America, drill!' — because an America that is focused first and foremost on drilling for oil is an America more focused on feeding its oil habit than kicking it.

"Why would Republicans, the party of business, want to focus our country on breathing life into a 19th-century technology — fossil fuels — rather than giving birth to a 21st-century technology — renewable energy? As I have argued before, it reminds me of someone who, on the eve of the I.T. revolution — on the eve of PCs and the Internet — is pounding the table for America to make more I.B.M. typewriters and carbon paper. 'Typewriters, baby, typewriters.'"

Exactly.

The Detroit Free Press, in its edition for Sunday (Sept. 14, 2008), offered a useful, if much less eloquent, analysis of Obama and McCain's energy policies, at least as they pertain to the auto industry.

What is striking is how specific Obama's plans are compared to the other guy's.

Beyond a piddling $300 million prize for a battery and a "clean car challenge," McCain says he will "promote" alternative fuels and encourage a faster switch to flex-fuel vehicles.

Obama laid out his energy plan in a speech in Lansing last month, in which he called for spending $15 billion a year for the next 10 years to eliminate the need for oil from the Middle East and Venezuela.

The Free Press summarized the rest of Obama's plans thusly:

"Increase CAFE standards 4% per year while providing $4billion for domestic automakers to retool their manufacturing facilities in America to produce these vehicles.
"Get a million plug-in hybrid cars, built in America, on the road by 2015.
"Create a new $7,000 tax credit for purchasing advanced vehicles.
"Establish a National Low Carbon Fuel Standard to reduce the carbon in fuels 10% by 2020.
"Require 60 billion gallons of advanced biofuels to be phased into the fuel supply by 2030."

It's pretty clear which energy policy would be better for Michigan workers and families.