As was pointed out in an op-ed piece Tuesday, concerning Barack Obama’s energy plan, energy concerns have become a major priority to Americans. Although every individual is due his or her opinion concerning various options, the importance of the situation demands fact to rise above fiction. Of the handful of points made, some were simply false and others ignored the larger situation, casting them into unjust light. Print space being limited, focus will be on the points most misrepresented.

The author of Tuesday’s article criticized enacting a one-time windfall tax on oil company profits to fund an immediate $1,000 emergency energy rebate to American families. The author argued that the tax would cause the price of gas to rise, which would only hurt the very families Obama plans to help. This is incorrect. In economic theory, such a tax is referred to as a ‘lump-sum tax,” which is non-distortionary, meaning it would have no effect on price/supply of gas.

Another point, and perhaps most misconstrued, is the continual reference to drilling in ANWR as if it were a solution. The author notes that there are an estimated 7.7 billion barrels of recoverable oil in that region. To put this into perspective, the U.S. uses 7.5 billion barrels of oil a year. Of this, 40 percent is used in passenger vehicles. In other words, through everyday driving, we would use all the oil in ANWR in about two years. A more long-term solution would be to change the gas consumption of daily commuters. The average vehicle on the road today gets 19.8 mpg, when there are commercially available options that get 69.2 mpg, such as the Toyota plug-in Prius hybrid. Yet, the author criticized Obama’s plan to give tax credits for energy efficient vehicles. To put a bit starker contrast between drilling and incentives to conserve, if every fleet vehicle on the road today were replaced with a Prius, the U.S. would save 28 percent of all its oil usage. This would result in a savings of two to four times the oil available in ANWR in the next 7-12 years respectively — the estimated amount of time necessary to recover the available oil in ANWR quoted by the author. This is an extreme example, but the potential reduction in oil usage is still high if only a fraction of the road vehicles became more energy efficient.

We can argue over whether we feel it’s moral or right to enact windfall taxes, or whether we think the government should “choose” winners for alternative energy through subsidies rather than raise the price of gas and let the market choose. These are opinions, but in discussing our opinions, let’s have the facts in plan sight.

Jeremiah Richey

Graduate student

Economics-Agriculture and Life Sciences