Rosemary Wehnes: Don't fall for Big Oil bait

Rosemary Wehnes  —  8/18/2008 11:52 am

As summer winds down, I took my 8-year-old nephew fishing for the first time at Lake Keesus, and the bluegills were biting. They were hungry and oblivious to the hook.

Squeezed by high energy prices, Wisconsinites are hungry too -- for energy policies that will reduce the cost of heating our homes in the coming winter and fueling our cars. Oil companies are taking advantage of our hunger and dangling their long-term drilling agenda before us. They are betting that we will take the bait -- hook, line and sinker.

But a recent national energy poll indicates that 83 percent of Americans support a plan to end our addiction to oil through investments in clean energy -- some 20 percent more than those who support increased offshore drilling.

For decades the oil companies have demanded access to the oil off our coasts and buried beneath our public, protected wildlands. Now, in the waning days of the Bush administration, they are making a last-chance land grab. But the demands for drilling should not drown out the fact that the beneficiary of increased offshore and domestic drilling would be the oil companies, not us.

The government's own research shows that drilling our coasts won't do anything to ease pain at the pump or create energy independence. The U.S. holds less than 3 percent of the world's oil, but we use 25 percent of it.

But we know who drilling would benefit -- Big Oil. The oil companies are raking in billions in profits. Last quarter, ExxonMobil made more money in one three-month period than any other corporation in U.S. history -- while we were paying $4 a gallon for gas.

An analysis of the record-breaking 2007 profits of just the five biggest oil companies -- ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron, Shell, and ConocoPhillips -- shows that they made an astonishing $2.4 billion in profits from Wisconsin's 4 million drivers -- about $610 for each driver in Wisconsin.

We know more drilling doesn't mean lower gas prices because we've already tried that. The number of new offshore drilling permits has tripled since 2001, and yet we're also paying triple what we were in 2001.

Swallowing the same hook won't solve our problem -- embracing clean energy options and efficiency will.

The honest answer to our oil problem is to use less oil, and that means better fuel efficiency and renewable energy. By simply making our homes, offices, cars and trucks more efficient, we would save energy and money today and far into the future.

It's time to draw a line in the sand. Handing over more of our shared coasts to Big Oil won't help us, it will only help them. The same national energy poll reported that 80 percent of Americans believe that we should end Big Oil's subsidies and use the money to invest in clean, renewable energy sources.

A serious national commitment to renewable energy would put our economy back on the path to prosperity by bringing energy costs under control, creating new "green" jobs, and making us more energy independent.

For many Wisconsinites, some of our fondest childhood memories are building sand castles, wading, fishing, and canoeing. We shouldn't allow Big Oil to rob our children and grandchildren of these opportunities, and we shouldn't let drilling supporters bait us about drilling's effect on gas prices.

Rosemary Wehnes, of Wauwatosa, is a Midwest associate representative for the Sierra Club.

Rosemary Wehnes  —  8/18/2008 11:52 am