High gas prices at the pump have Republicans pointing fingers at President Barack Obama, and Obama is pointing his finger right back. Despite all of this blame, no price decreases are on the horizon.

In an election year, Obama must be cognizant of the $5 mark on gas, but must also appease the left with limits on drilling and fracking. It’s a situation difficult to manage with turmoil in the Middle East threatening supplies and increased demand from Brazil, Russia, India, and China.

With a solution needed soon, the president’s vision of a sustainable United States that relies on alternative energies is far more practical than the conservative view of ‘drill, baby, drill.’

New energies would provide jobs, reduce emissions and allow the United States to emerge as the world leader once again after the economic turmoil of the past three years. Drilling can reduce prices in the short run, but it will put us at a severe disadvantage within the next decade.

Gas prices are at a high of $3.764 per gallon on average, a 28-cent increase in the past month. Even Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney can admit the president has a tough time controlling volatile gas prices. ‘I think the American people know that to a certain degree gas prices are driven by what’s happening around the world, supply and demand,’ Romney said. Very insightful.

But his near-sighted answers to open domestic drilling sites in areas like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, building the Keystone pipeline through environmentally sensitive lands and tapping into the country’s vital oil reserves do not address the underlying problem of our overdependence on the commodity. Obama jabbed at his opponents for pushing a three-point plan for $2 gas. ‘Step one is to drill, and step two is to drill, and then step three is to keep drilling,’ he said.

With U.S. oil consumption near 20 million barrels of oil a day, more than double China, it is impossible for us to drill our way out of the problem. The United States consumes more than 20 percent of the world’s supply, but it sits on only 2 percent of oil reserves. More sustainable action must be taken.

Obama has acknowledged the hard-to-swallow truth that gas prices will not likely go down in the near future, but he has continued to push for policies that will slowly wean us off of foreign oil dependency. His solution is what he called an ‘all-of-the-above’ response, based on more domestic offshore oil production, development of alternative energy sources and stricter fuel-efficiency standards.

It is true that environmental effects of drilling are valid, but being overly sensitive to them can lead to skyrocketing prices at the pump in the short term. For instance, natural gas prices are so low that domestic companies have actually cut back on production. Though fracking is a potentially harmful practice, the fuel itself produces 30 percent fewer greenhouse gases than oil.

Even more exciting, natural gas vehicles are set to hit the market as soon as this summer and pumps are ready to be installed right in your garage. Combined with fuel efficiency standards that require cars to get 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025, natural gas can help reduce foreign oil dependency immediately.

‘We can’t rely on fossil fuels from the last century,’ Obama said, calling for renewed investment in alternative energy. ‘Anyone who tells you we can drill our way out of this problem doesn’t know what they’re talking about.’

Stephen Fox is a graduate student studying for his master’s degree in entrepreneurship and a graduate of the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. His columns appear weekly. He can be reached at smfox03@syr.edu.  

Published on March 8, 2012 at 12:00 pm