Friday, Jul 4, 2008
Al Gore and the Democrats' attacks aside, rising gas prices could be the only thing that forces the U.S. to stop hogging the world's energy.
Jun 21, 2000 | Oil prices are climbing again, at the gas pump and as an issue in public opinion polls. Congressional Democrats are warning that rising gas prices could cost the party its chances to recapture the House and Senate, and now Vice President Al Gore has joined the debate, attacking the oil industry's huge profits and calling for an investigation into antitrust violations and price gouging.
On Monday, Gore told reporters he'd only just learned of the big profit hike most major oil companies enjoyed in the first quarter of this year. "Now you put two and two together and look at the huge price increases that they say they can't explain and look at the 500 percent increase in profits and look at the way they've been getting bigger," Gore told CNN.
"I think that all adds up to a need for investigation of collusion, antitrust violations and price gouging."
Price gouging is certainly deplorable, but as a self-described environmentalist, Gore might see a silver lining in higher gas prices: They could help achieve what Congress has been loath to promote with legislation -- reduced gas consumption by consumers, and hastened development of alternative-fuel vehicles that could cut emissions of greenhouse gases and other pollutants.
In fact, what's most striking in the political debate over rising oil prices, which began last spring, is the consensus that it represents a national crisis. After all, the inflation-adjusted price of oil in the United States this year hasn't come close to reaching a historic high: We hit that in 1981, when the price in current dollars was more than $2.50. Even now, most of us pay less than $2 a gallon for gas, while Parisians pay $5, and Londoners pay up to $8. Most of the world's drivers fold themselves into light, tiny cars that get high mileage, and ration out their car trips frugally, for special occasions. Not us.
When oil and gas prices first began to climb early this year, Congress quickly piled on. Republicans wanted to repeal 4.3 cents of the 18.4-cent federal gasoline tax -- which was enacted in 1993 thanks to Gore's tie-breaking vote. The 4.3-cent increase, it should be remembered, was the legislative vestige of a failed administration effort to introduce an economy-wide BTU tax. Then Republicans remembered that the 4.3-cent tax funds highways, a popular pork-barrel outlet, and they had to shelve that plan.
Next, House Republicans tried to pass legislation forcing the president to cut foreign aid and military sales to countries that "fix" oil prices. But again they were neutralized by fellow Republicans, including colleagues from oil states, who kind of liked oil prices the way they were.
The convenient approach was the one finally settled on: find a foreign scapegoat. Republicans and Democrats could agree on one thing: the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) needed to lower its prices. (We may think of ourselves as democratic, but when the subject is oil, the rest of the world gets very little slack.) In the end, OPEC begrudgingly complied, but U.S. gas prices have stayed high, and in some places continued to climb.
Now it's Democrats who are agitated about the high cost of gasoline, especially in the Midwest. According to the Washington Post, Democratic congressional leaders have warned Clinton and Gore that anger over rising prices could cost the party its efforts to take back the House and Senate. Among the responses considered: lifting clean-air restrictions in Midwestern states, and tapping into the nation's strategic petroleum reserve.
And while Republicans have tried to use the issue to bash the Clinton administration, even some cabinet officials have acknowledged a problem. "We were caught napping," Energy Secretary Bill Richardson has admitted. "We got complacent."
Truth be told, the U.S. iscomplacent about oil, but not in the way Richardson acknowledged. When the price we've become accustomed to is threatened, we step in rather routinely. (Remember the Gulf War, anybody?) Instead, what's complacent is the unthinking avidity with which we consume the stuff. In Europe, where global warming is taken far more seriously than in the United States, drivers might be forgiven for wondering whether they sacrifice so that their American counterparts can drive Excursions and Broncos and Suburbans -- the SUVs that make up an ever-growing portion of the new cars sold each year.
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