The House voting 232-187, yesterday approved a bill to end a 25-year-old moratorium on offshore oil and gas drilling.

I think that the Congress working to lessen our dependence on foreign sources of energy is a good thing. Being reliant on foreign nations for something as vital as our energy needs is not a status quo we should seek to keep.

However, why is it that whenever this issue is brought up, the root cause of the problem is never addressed?

It’s one thing to discuss the negative impacts of relying on countries in an unstable reigon for oil and gas. It’s another to have the political will to stand up to the oil and gas lobby and take a stand on the real source of the problem: consumption.

I always hear talking heads on the right talk about how Democrats and other non-Republicans don’t want us to be energy independent because they tend to vote against things like ANWR and this, but I think that those type of solutions don’t actually solve anything in the long term.

Giving the oil companies access to places like ANWR and offshore sites simply fuels what is in President Bush’s words, an “addiction to oil”. The way you beat an addiction isn’t giving the addict access to more product. Rather, you wean them off it slowly while being careful not to permanently harm a system that’s been dependent on it for so long.

To that end, rather than taking up issues of such vital national importance as gay marriage and flag burning, why doesn’t the Congress discuss how to cut consumption in this country? Why don’t we fund more projects to that end rather than spending taxpayer dollars subsidizing an already insanely profitable industry?

For example, having a nationwide public transit infrastructure could cut down on consumption drastically, especially during the holidays. A record number of people will be travelling for the 4th of July, but not many of them will be using public transit. We don’t have a real nationwide rail system like Europe does, and the reason for that isn’t because we don’t have the means or access to the correct technology. Investment in such an industry would be good for the nation for many reasons, consumption and reducing pollution among them.

How about alternative fuels? Well, we’ve made some progress on getting these brought to the forefront of discussion about energy.. but there are still problems with the solutions being presented. We should be looking at ethanol from sugar cane (which is what Brazil uses, and they are on track to declare energy dependence within the next year or two), but instead we’ll be using corn which is much less effecient.

The fuel effeciency of our vehicles is another major factor thing that Congress has been completely silent on. For all of the rhetoric about wanting to make us energy independent, they haven’t taken what is perhaps the biggest step that they could take to see that goal become a reality. Why are we not making our cars more fuel effecient? More aerodynamic cars would be a simple step that could increase effeciency. A significant portion of a car’s consumption of gas goes to simply pushing it through wind resistance. A harder step would be requiring that we increase fuel economy standards and require that all vehicles on the road get better gas mileage.

Hopefully we’ll continue on the path of seeing energy effeciency, alternative fuels, and energy independence remain in the forefront of political discussion. With gas prices, I’m almost certain that will be the case. But along with that, hopefully we’ll begin to see politicians begin to address the real issue that can bring about the largest amount of positive change; consumption.