Answering “All of the Above” was rarely a good idea during multiple choice tests back in school. It always felt like that choice was meant to trip you up. These days it seems that some in Congress are using the same tactic to trick the American people into choosing to support bad energy policy. Here’s how it works:
Rising gas prices over the past few months have put a pinch in our wallets. Since our transportation system runs on oil, consumers find themselves stuck. While it’s probably the case that the days of cheap gas are gone for good, people are demanding relief at the pump.
Republicans in Congress are offering a rather simplistic – and fundamentally false – “solution” to a rather complex energy problem. Let’s just drill for more oil!
Never mind that America has only 3% of the world’s oil supplies and we use roughly 25% of all oil. Even oilman T. Boone Pickens knows that we could never drill our way to energy independence. Yet “drill, baby, drill!” is what many politicians are recklessly clamoring for.
So in the face of these facts, the drilling proponents in Congress are pushing an energy plan that hinges on drilling everywhere possible – particularly off our coasts and in protected wilderness. Yet this scheme is packaged as a smattering of several energy production policies, mostly “dirty” energy like liquid coal, oil shale and nuclear power mixed with a little dash of clean energy like renewables and efficiency.
They call this: “All of the Above.”
As our new ad reveals, “All of the Above” is all hat, no cattle. This scheme is really about subsidizing fossil fuels and extending our nation’s dangerous addiction to oil. These dirty energy measures would come at the expense of the clean energy that is needed – NOW – to power America.