Joe Conason: His Drilling Plan Full of Holes

His Drilling Plan Full of Holes
By Joe Conason


Touring America's oilrigs and nuclear plants, John McCain sometimes sounds as if he'll produce enough wind to power the nation all by himself. So strongly does his current rhetoric smell of methane -- the gas emanating from manure -- that he might even qualify for an alternative energy tax incentive.

The former straight talker, who once could not help but tell the truth, has found the voice of the demagogue within. As McCain seeks to exploit public anger over the price of gasoline, first with his dubious "gas tax holiday" and now with his campaign for offshore oil drilling, the thoughtful legislator who defied his own party on global warming and Alaskan oil leasing has been replaced by that much more familiar Congressional figure -- a rented mouthpiece for the energy industry.

Not surprisingly, this new McCain is not quite as accessible to the press as the earlier version, partly because he resents the media attention devoted to his Democratic opponent and partly because he no longer is so eager to answer every question a reporter might pose. He prefers to listen to the cheers of eager boobs who believe him when he says, "We're not going to pay $4 a gallon for gas because we are going to drill here, and we are going to drill now!"

But should he ever stop yelling and start thinking again, there will be plenty of questions awaiting him, including these:

Senator, if you truly think we should be doing "all of the above" to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, why have you voted against every recent Congressional measure to encourage renewable energy sources?

If you still worry about the effects of climate change, then why do you now emphasize drilling for additional oil offshore rather than energy sources that don't create greenhouse gases? And why do you continue to talk about so-called "clean coal," which doesn't actually exist?

Why do you say that offshore drilling will cut gasoline prices when the Energy Information Administration predicts that will not happen for a decade and will make little difference even then?

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