Green Leaf Report

So President  Bush has been out stumping in Saudi Arabia asking them to pump out more of their non-renewable oil resources so that America can have temporarily lowered prices.  I guess if the Saudis complied, that plan would work for lowering prices at least until the Saudis ran out of oil and/or Bush was no longer in office and high gas prices could be blamed on a later chump/president.

I cringed when I read this, as if ANWR and more more more consumption is the only option:

Bush’s domestic energy plan includes opening a coastal strip of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to oil exploration and production and making it easier to build new oil refineries and nuclear power plants in the United States. Even if Congress decided to approve them, the moves would not offer short-term relief to families.

I regularly receive emails and letters from our two Texas Senators on the actions they’re taking to fight our nation’s dependence on foreign oil- unfortunately these actions also seem primarily dependent on drilling in ANWR

It’s too late for short-term relief.  We saw gas prices near our house, in the cheap-gas state of Texas, at $3.99 9/10 per gallon yesterday.  Maybe we’ll hit $6/gallon or more this summer- for the sake of changes in consumption practices; we can only hope…but if this price-point is used by the oil industry as leverage to finally get into ANWR and other protected areas, well, the short-term solution really does place the problem back into our children’s laps.

So we’ll let future generations deal with the plundered wildlife reserve, a nation still dependent on oil, and increased climate change because all we can do is more of the same?  We’re all capable of making moral decisions, let’s hold our politicians to that.

Longer term solutions are needed: greater availability of public transportation, alternative fuels, conservation.  Change your practices, stop commuting 80 miles roundtrip to work every day in the oversized-SUV-house-on-wheels, and write and call your elected officials to support funding clean energy and increased availability of public transportation as a preferred solution to the energy crisis.