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August 13,
2008
The Good
It's not often that you can point to The Washington Post as
the voice of reason, but the paper has its moments. One
was the August 12 oil drilling editorial that debunked three
major "‘truths' masquerading as fact" about offshore drilling.
The piece,
headlined
"Snake Oil," showed how groups like the liberal Natural
Resources Defense Council (NRDC) misconstrue the issue in their
opposition to expanded drilling. The NRDC has recently taken out ads
in the Post and other papers detailing its opposition to drilling -
downplaying the amount of oil available offshore, claming existing
leases are going unused and maximizing the environmental "danger" of
drilling.
While the
editorial argued against drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife
Refuge (ANWR) because it "should be preserved," the Post editorial
went on to explain why drilling offshore makes sense.
It pointed
out that estimates of 18 billion barrels of oil offshore are based
on old measurements. Data from the Interior Department's Minerals
Management Service (MMS) are out of date. In a similar situation,
the Post wrote, the department estimated 9 billion barrels were
beneath the Gulf of Mexico. "By 2006, after major advances in
seismic technology and deepwater drilling techniques, the MMS
resource estimate for that area had ballooned to 45 billion
barrels."
That's a
400-percent increase. A similar rise would mean 90 billion barrels
of oil are offshore.
The Post
also disregarded the claim that oil companies don't use the leases
they now own. "The notion that oil companies are just sitting on oil
leases is a myth. With oil prices still above $100 a barrel, that
charge never made sense," said the Post.
To tackle
the claim that drilling offshore is bad for the environment, the
Post went back to the MMS. "According to the MMS, between 1993 and
2007, there were 651 spills of all sizes at OCS facilities (in
federal waters three miles or more offshore) that released 47,800
barrels of oil. With 7.5 billion barrels of oil produced in that
time, that equates to 1 barrel of oil spilled per 156,900 barrels
produced."
The Bad
The death
of suburbia sounds like something you might find in a science
fiction novel, not on the network news. However, the August 7 “CBS
Evening News” suggested it is a plausible theory when you factor in
high gas prices and declining home values.
Fill-in
anchor Russ Mitchell reported that with gas near $4 a gallon, the
cons now outweigh the pros of living in the suburbs and the working
public will be forced to move out of smaller
municipalities and
back into large cities.
“Sixty years
ago, cheap gas and new highways helped fuel suburbia’s rapid rise,
creating a new American utopia,” CBS correspondent Ben Tracy said.
“But now the triple threat of falling home values, empty nesters
returning to the city and sky-high gas prices is driving suburbia to
the brink. Some developments are left half-built, while other homes
look abandoned. Demand for suburban housing is dropping so fast that
a recent study predicts that by 2025 there will be a surplus of 22
million large-lot homes in suburban areas.”
The
backdrop of Tracy’s report: California –
a state among hardest hit
in the housing downturn and not necessarily the norm for the rest of
the country. Nonetheless, Tracy said this could be “the beginning of
the end” for the ’burbs.
“It
sounds hard to believe, but some experts are now predicting that
this could be the beginning of the end of suburbia – that far-flung
neighborhoods like this one could be tomorrow’s slums,” Tracy said.
Tracy
based his assertions on the writings of James Howard Kunstler, an
author who told “Evening News” that he thinks “the project of
suburbia is over.” However, Kunstler also has peddled other
doom-and-gloom scenarios that didn’t come true, including
cataclysmic failures surrounding Y2K
and the Dow Jones Industrial Index (DJIA)
crashing
to 4,000 by the end of 2005.
“Author
James Howard Kunstler has been predicting the decline of the suburbs
for more than 15 years,” Tracy said. “He says housing far away from
job centers won’t survive.”
The Ugly
The media continue to have Obama's back after his ridiculous
claim tire inflation could be a substitute for oil drilling in a
speech
at a rally in Missouri on July 30.
MSNBC anchor Alex Witt is the latest in a long line of media
personalities expressing irritation that McCain is using the
presumptive Democratic nominee's tire inflation comment in his
campaign against Obama. After Obama’s speech, the McCain campaign
distributed tire-pressure gauges labeled “Obama’s Energy Plan.” Witt
interviewed former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott on August 7
about McCain's strategy.
"But sir,
when John McCain picks up this tire-gauge issue and you know -
throws it about back and forth, doesn't he just perpetuate the
problem?" Witt asked. "I mean, if you were advising him, wouldn't
you say, ‘Can you leave it alone?' or does it work for him?"
Lott, whom
Witt disclosed is a lobbyist for the oil and gas industry prior to
the interview, disagreed that McCain is perpetuating the problem by
using the tire-gauge issue against Obama.
"No, I
think that the air gauge thing emphasizes how actually frivolous the
Obama, you know, proposals are with regard to energy," Lott said.
"Sure, everybody says inflate your tires more, turn your thermostat
up a little bit more. But is that going to solve the problem? Sure
we want conservation. We should give people tax incentives to
insulate their homes better and do other things to conserve energy.
That's not enough. You can't solve this problem just by shrinking
your usage. You've got to produce more."
Obama has
stuck to his guns on the tire-gauge claim
at a rally in Ohio on August 5, calling naysayers "ignorant."
"The other
thing is, they are making fun of a step that every expert says would
absolutely reduce our oil consumption by three to four percent,"
Obama said. "It's like these guys take pride in being ignorant. They
think it's funny that they're making fun of something that is
actually true."
The Good, the Bad & the Ugly tracks the best and worst media
coverage of business and economics. Readers are invited to submit
suggestions or news tips to Staff Writer Jeff Poor at
jpoor@mediaresearch.org. |
