Against Paris Hilton's Energy Policy

Dear Paris,

Along with more than two million other red-blooded Americans, I watched your response to the attack on you by John McCain. Kudos to you for not letting the wrinkly white-haired guy push you around.

But you're wrong about energy policy. Here's what you said in the video:

"Here's my energy policy: Barack wants to focus on new technologies to cut foreign oil dependency. And McCain wants offshore drilling. Well why don't we do a hybrid of both candidates' ideas. We can do limited offshore drilling, with strict environmental oversight, while creating tax incentives to get Detroit making hybrid and electric cars. That way, the offshore drilling carries us until the new technologies kick in, which will then create new jobs and energy independence. Energy crisis solved."

Offshore drilling isn't going to do squat, Paris. Have you looked at the numbers?

As Dean Baker and Nichole Szembrot of the Center for Economic and Policy Research noted in a June 2008 paper, the U.S. Energy Information Administration - which produces official energy statistics for the U.S. government, and whose mission is to "provide policy-neutral data, forecasts, and analyses to promote sound policy making, efficient markets, and public understanding regarding energy and its interaction with the economy and the environment" - projects that

Senator McCain's proposal would have no impact in the near-term since it will be close to a decade before the first oil can be extracted from the currently protected offshore areas. The EIA projects that production will reach 200,000 barrels a day (0.2 percent of projected world production) at peak production in close to twenty years. It describes this amount as too small to have any significant effect on oil prices.

"No impact in the near-term." That means it's not going to "carry us" until something else happens. It's not a short-term solution.

And it's not a long-term solution, either. Does 200,000 barrels a day sound like a lot? In terms of the global oil market, it's nothing. How small is 0.2%? In the first 11 weeks, your movie "House of Wax" grossed $32 million at the box office. If your contract guaranteed you 0.2% of the gross (which I doubt it did), you would have received $64,000. I imagine that would barely cover your hairdressing bill for the year.

As CEPR notes, if the United States had simply continued raising auto fuel efficiency standards annually between 1985-2005 by a quarter of the amount it raised them annually from 1980-1985 - instead of leaving them virtually unchanged - the result would have roughly been the equivalent of 3.3 million barrels of oil per day in new production in 2008 - 16 times the long-term impact of the offshore drilling touted by McCain.

If you want a short-term solution, try this: if the United States negotiated a deal with Iran that led to the lifting of US sanctions on Iran, it would immediately calm oil markets, and could lead to an increase in Iranian production of 1-2 million barrels a day after a few years. That increase would be 5 to 10 times McCain's offshore drilling.

I welcome you to the debate, Paris. There is no leverage in America like access to the microphone. Your celebrity gives you an awesome power, at which mere scribblers can only shake our heads in envy. Use your power for good. Support conservation and real negotiations with Iran - and oppose offshore drilling.

See more Paris Hilton videos at Funny or Die

Comments

[mexobserver]

Paris is such a fresh-faced gal and hers is such a fresh perspective in comparison with that olden, renegade celebrity's desperate ads. But isn't the core issue here when will Americans and other peoples finally realize that the search for the coveted non-renewable source, be it through offshore drilling or blood-for-oil aggressions, will ultimately lead entire populations and planet Earth to their doom? O.K., offshore drilling certainly won't yield in the short-term, and, I totally agree with electric vehicles, What to this day I cannot grasp is, what is the shame in diplomatic negotiations with Iran in lieu of, yet again, playing the aggressive cowboy armed with forged and politicized "Intelligence" Analyses? Indeed the USAmerican people knows that in the wake of Watergate and under the eye of Bush the elder the politicization of up-to-then objective CIA's analyses got to the extent that several objective CIA analysts left in disgust? I don't have any special access, I simply read a well-documented book by an AP investigative journalist. So I guess the essential thing to do before voting in November elections must be get the right information, not believe the lie that Iran is not entitled to enrich uranium under the non-proliferation treaty rules, as they once believed the lies on Saddam's WMD?
I read Paris's parents contributed to McCain's campaign. Maybe McCain asked permission from them for the ad, and Paris disagreed with her particular name being taken?

[MaxGladwell]

Let the market and the states decide. If the states will allow it. And if the oil companies can make it feasible without taxpayer subsidies and in the presence of "strict environmental oversight" i.e. bonds to cover any potential environmental damage, then Congress has no reason whatsoever not to lift the ban. The reality is that it will never happen. Governors of all three west-coast states oppose it. It doesn't make sense at all. Even IF this extra demand came on the market today and it brought prices down by a couple dollars, it would bring it down for EVERYONE. Every country in the world that uses oil would get a $2 discount. Thank you to the United States and our offshore drilling. Meanwhile, it does absolutely zero for gas prices. But we know that it won't do anything.

This is purely a political issue. Let the Republicans have it. It'll never happen. Moving on...

www.MaxGladwell.com

[personalpolitical]

Thank you, I had the same response when I first say that, I was yelling at the computer "OFFSHORE DRILLING IS NOT A SHORT TERM SOLUTION!!!" (or any solution at all)

It is sad, if she would have actually gotten the facts straight it actually would have probably been the most effective tool in getting this debate on the right track. Alas, she just bought into the GOP lies about offshore drilling.

[Luigi53102]

I find it really hard to believe that you people are debating "energy policy" with Paris Hilton.

[KOB1]

Are you folks serious? Didn't any of you (except, it seems, for ORSunshine) get the joke? Taking time to rebut or otherwise comment on Ms. Hilton's rif on energy policy as though she intended it to be interpreted as a serious (or even reasonable) alternative energy policy? Do you really think that the fundamental point of the video was energy policy? It wasn't -- it was about dissing both the "wrinkly white-haired guy and, even to a lesser degree, the "change" dude. Don't any of you understand the concept of self-deprecating satire? Or even just plain, ordinary satire?

Score a bunch of points to Ms. Hilton.

[RobertNaiman]

Sigh. Shockingly, we do understand concept of satire. We also understand that in a context where it is an undisputed fact that the official government agency that is responsible for weighing in on such questions states that McCain's plan will do zero, and yet the national political debate, thanks mainly to the cowardly mainstream media, plunges forward as if this were a serious proposal, no opportunity for restating that fact can be passed over.

[harriscrl3]

I'm not a fan of any form of drilling. To me its like a drug addict trying to get clean but desperately searching between his couch on the floor in his pockets hoping to find drugs. We need to get off oil period end of story not find new oil.

Carol

[CalexenderJ]

A rebuttal to Paris Hilton's energy policy, I bet this is an article you never thought you would write. Good point though, the drill here, drill now people have made it seems like drilling is the solution to the high gas prices, Paris isn't the only one who as bought into this fallacy.

[RobertNaiman]

I am of the Alinksy school. Social change activists go where the action is. There is no celebrity I wouldn't write about, if by doing so I thought I could promote public education about issues that I care about. Paris' video is of course just a symptom of the broader malady. But examples are useful for the purpose of explanation.

[DickTater]

I had the same reaction, offshore drilling will not "carry us" until we get more hybrids or plug-in cars. Actually, we could make more hybrids and plugin cars LONG before any oil would be pumped.

I would actually like someone to clue me in. I heard, long ago, that our own american oil has caveats tied to it....we cannot bilk the american consumer with american oil. If we do sell our own oil to ourselves, it has to be at reduced rates...or capped rates. However, selling our oil ELSEWHERE there is no such cap and profits can be maximized. Similarly, oil brought in from elsewhere has no caps and the people can be royally screwed, as long as it is foreign oil.
Is this correct? Do we really have most of our oil going foreign, and replaced with foreign sourced oil, just so the oil companies can make outrageous rapacious profits?

If we ate our own vegetables and used our own oil, wouldn't we be far far better off?

[ORSunshine]

That video was pretty funny... the best part was her obvious reading of a script. The saddest part was that she pronounced all the words correctly -- in that regard, she is certainly better presidential material than the lame-duck-in-Chief.

I hope she gets wind of this post though -- or at least hears back that her "energy solution" isn't a very realistic solution. Good job breaking it down for her in simple math terms that she can relate to...

[dsbsh]

On the other hand, her plan does appear to have more substance in it than does McCain's...