Offshore drilling: "a massive, fraudulent, pathetic excuse for an energy policy"

Soaring crude oil and energy prices are crippling the economy, driving up food, transportation and production costs, and eroding our standard of living.

Thomas Friedman writes that President Bush's proposal to address soaring gasoline and energy prices through offshore drilling, which has been adopted hook, line, and sinker by Republican Presidential nominee John McCain, is "...a massive, fraudulent, pathetic excuse for an energy policy...."

His Sunday column begins:

Two years ago, President Bush declared that America was “addicted to oil,” and, by gosh, he was going to do something about it. Well, now he has. Now we have the new Bush energy plan: “Get more addicted to oil.”

Actually, it’s more sophisticated than that: Get Saudi Arabia, our chief oil pusher, to up our dosage for a little while and bring down the oil price just enough so the renewable energy alternatives can’t totally take off. Then try to strong arm Congress into lifting the ban on drilling offshore and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

It’s as if our addict-in-chief is saying to us: “C’mon guys, you know you want a little more of the good stuff. One more hit, baby. Just one more toke on the ole oil pipe. I promise, next year, we’ll all go straight. I’ll even put a wind turbine on my presidential library. But for now, give me one more pop from that drill, please, baby. Just one more transfusion of that sweet offshore crude.”

It is hard for me to find the words to express what a massive, fraudulent, pathetic excuse for an energy policy this is. But it gets better.

Friedman's entire column is linked.