For the past several years the Democrat leadership in Congress, in concert with environmentalist lobbying groups, has blasted the Bush administration for not doing anything about global warming allegedly caused by mankind’s growing demand for oil and other fossil fuels.
I have already written about my thoughts on climate change in a previous column many months ago. In that column, while dismissing the charges that man is to blame for natural climatic cycles, I nonetheless applauded all efforts to minimize our use of imported oil for national security reasons.
And when it was politically convenient, the Democrats also rushed to their microphones with ideas on how to halt our needless consumption of petroleum products and save the planet.
Last summer Democratic Congressman John Dingell, Chair of the House Energy & Commerce Committee, floated an idea to impose an additional 50 cents per gallon gasoline tax based on his economic analysis that higher fuel prices would cause consumers to buy more fuel efficient cars and, thus, less oil products.
Even back in 1993, President Bill Clinton proposed an additional 26 cents tax on gasoline as part of his planned BTU tax on fossil fuels. Then Vice President Al Gore - of more recent global warming fame - defended that proposal as a good way to start reducing the use of automobiles.
So why are the Democrats now complaining about the high cost of gasoline? They should be applauding the ever increasing price of fuel for our automobiles. Especially since it appears that Dingell and Clinton were correct in their elementary economic assumptions about the elasticity of gasoline.
Recently, the media has been reporting that the market value of gas guzzling SUVs have plummeted as American consumers start looking again at smaller, more fuel efficient, cars and trucks. Mass transportation systems around the country are reporting record ridership levels. And Washington, D.C. recently introduced a bicycle sharing plan similar to that used in Amsterdam.
I am old enough to remember the last time the American public was faced with record gasoline prices. The year was 1979 and our country was led by Democratic President Jimmy Carter. Similar to today’s cries from the liberal media and their Democratic cohorts in Congress, everybody blamed the big oil companies at that time. Back then, the issue was actually a decrease in supply from the Middle East. Once supplies increased again, gas prices returned to normalcy.
Today, it is also not the fault of oil companies. Instead, it is again a market phenomenon but this time with a twist. Not only are we are faced with an unprecedented increase in worldwide demand for oil, we also have a weak dollar which has forced the price of oil to increase so that our international suppliers can maintain their revenue streams relative to their currencies.
So while the world awaits a stronger dollar and an influx of new oil discoveries thanks to the profits possible from high oil prices, it is fun to watch the politicians – especially the Democratic presidential candidates – debate how to reduce the price of gasoline even while the high price and the marketplace are helping to decrease the consumption of oil products and their supposed impact on global warming.
