The rising price of gasoline is a driving force in the presidential primary Tuesday.
“The prices are too, too high,” said Margaret Asaju of Syracuse’s east side. She, like many other voters in Onondaga County, sees the effect of the soaring gasoline prices every time she fills up her tank to drive to Crouse
Hospital where she works as a registered nurse.
The price of gasoline has been steadily on the rise. The average self-service price of regular grade gasoline jumped from $1.85 to $2.81 between 2004 and 2007, according to the Energy Information Administration, a statistical agency of the U.S. Department of Energy.
The same study estimates the average price through 2008 to be $3.14.
Despite its visible effect on the public, the presidential contenders have remained quiet on the issue of gas prices.
“What is there to say?” asks Michael J. Wasylenko, professor of economics and senior associate dean at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. The president can do little directly about gas prices, said Wasylenko. Gasoline prices are the result of a complex set of international economics say economists.
Instead of focusing on gasoline prices, the candidates all have come up with some sort of energy reform. Wasylenko attributes this concern to the high gas prices weighing on people economically and a higher public concern for the environment.
“The carbon footprint is getting traction now that it’s gotten on peoples’ radar screens,” he said.
Republican front-runners Sen. John McCain of Arizona, and Mitt Romney, former governor of Massachusetts, have both advocated plans focused on reducing America’s dependence on foreign oil.
Romney’s plan calls for increased research for energy efficiency, including improved storage, more efficient use of fossil fuels and development of alternate energy sources. He also supports increasing domestic production of oil and natural gas. This would include opening up the Artic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in Alaska for oil drilling.
“This kind of energy independence will also mean pursuing ample domestic sources of energy,” Romney said in a speech at the Bush Presidential Library Center in April 2007. Those included, he said, “more drilling offshore and in ANWR, nuclear power, renewable sources, ethanol, biodiesel, solar, wind, and full exploitation of coal — both solid and liquid.”
McCain also pushes for increased research on energy efficiency. His plan focuses on developing more fuel efficient products and making a shift to energy sources that are not oil-based. He calls for diversifying energy sources in his plan.
“It will promote the diversification and conservation of our energy sources that will in sufficient time break the dominance of oil in our transportation sector just as we diversified away from oil use in electric power generation thirty years ago,” McCain said in a speech in Washington, D.C., in April 2007.
On the Democratic side, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois and Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York have laid out plans focusing on reducing energy use and its harm to the environment.
Clinton’s plan promotes reducing energy consumption through an energy fund to promote research in energy efficiency. This would include building homes and remodeling homes to be energy efficient. She also promotes a partnership with automakers. This would involve giving automakers government bonds to help them produce more fuel-efficient vehicles.
“But I’m not going to ask the auto companies to do it alone,” Clinton said in a speech in November 2007. “I want to be a partner, a good partner, to help them transition to a clean energy future.”
Obama also supports making a shift towards more energy-efficient technology. His plan is to set efficiency goals and promotes the development of non-oil fuel sources. He asks commitment patience from the people in implementing these strategies.
“Now, none of these steps will happen overnight,” Obama said in a speech in Portsmouth, N.H., in October 2007. “They will take time, they will take sacrifice, and they will take a sustained commitment from the American people.”
Donald H. Dutkowsky, professor of economics at the Maxwell School of Citizenship at Syracuse University, expressed concern that the plans proposed by the candidates are not permanent solutions to the energy problem. Romney’s plan to increase domestic production of oil, Dutkowsky said, may alleviate peoples’ immediate concerns over the limited oil supply. But it won’t, he said, have any actual effect for a while.
“These things take time to happen,” he said. “These things take years to happen.”
On the other plans to increase energy efficiency, Dutkowsky said that the proposals would lessen the demand for oil. But he was skeptical that they would be permanent solutions as opposed to quick fixes.
“We tend not to be a country of planners,” he said. “We tend to wait for a crisis and then react to it.”
Until some sort of solution does come along, Americans, like Margaret Asaju of Syracuse’s east side, will have to deal with paying for expensive gasoline for their morning commutes.
“I only have ten minutes’ drive,” Asaju said. “But there are people who have like a whole hour.”
(Liam Migdail-Smith is a junior newspaper journalism student.)
-30-
