The race for president

Turning green?

America's candidates for the presidency have contradictory views about oil prices and the environment

DO VOTERS worry more about climate change, America’s dependence on foreign oil or the cost of filling their petrol tanks? The last may well be the most pressing. This week the president of OPEC, Chakib Khelil, raised the spectre of the price of a barrel of oil hitting an eye-popping $200. Even at nearly $120 a barrel, the current price, motorists are squealing. A poll released on Tuesday April 29th suggests that the price of petrol is the single greatest concern among voters today.

No wonder that the three candidates for president are tapping into these issues. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, the Democratic rivals, both say they will do something about climate change and energy security. So does the Republican candidate-designate John McCain, and unusually forcefully for a member of his party. The politicians have been spurred along by a variety of forces, from Al Gore pointing to evidence of man’s part in causing climate change, to pressure from religious environmentalists who see a God-given duty to act as stewards of the planet. Foreign-policy types, too, worry about America’s reliance on oil from the Middle East.

Promises of fixes, from both sides of the aisle, typically involve America’s optimistic view of its technological prowess. New fuels and greener cars are seen as a big part of a solution to climate change. But, in a sign of how the three candidates are distinct from George Bush, they also favour plans for capping carbon emissions and for the introduction of a system for trading carbon permits.

The immediate concern, however, is the cost of petrol. Combined with higher food prices and a crashing housing market, energy costs are making middle-class and poorer Americans feel vulnerable. Thus the politicians promise swift action. Mrs Clinton produced the biggest basket of ideas in a speech on Monday. Following an earlier proposal by Mr McCain, she wants to suspend the federal petrol tax of 18.4 cents for the summer driving season. This would be paid for with a windfall-tax on oil companies. Exxon, for example, is sure to announce bumper profits on Thursday. She wants to ban gasoline-price “gouging” and says she would go after “speculators” whom she says are driving up prices. And she talks of hauling OPEC to the World Trade Organisation and even to American courts for anti-competitive behaviour.

Not much of this would make a difference. Her suggestion that no more oil should now be added to America’s nearly-full Strategic Petroleum Reserve would have only a marginal impact. Hitting oil companies with windfall taxes may generate revenue, which Mrs Clinton wants to put into research for green technologies (and hopefully generating what she calls “green-collar” jobs in hard-hit rust-belt states). But higher taxes could also discourage exploration and investment, curtailing supply and driving up oil prices again.

Energy economists dispute whether speculators are really responsible for much of oil’s current high price, and thus whether attacking them would do much good. In any case, spotting speculators might be tricky: oil traders, including arms of big firms such as Exxon and Chevron, help to keep the market liquid and thus generally to keep prices lower than they might otherwise be. Clamping down on them might have the opposite effect. As for “gouging”, it is not clear how much of that, versus reasonable price increases, is really going on. Isolated cases are already being prosecuted and the more could follow, for example on anti-competition grounds. Talk of hauling OPEC countries to court, essentially to force them to stop acting like OPEC, may play well among voters but seems most unlikely to convince producers to turn on the taps.

The most obvious thing that the government could do to lower oil prices would be to cut taxes, as Mr McCain and Mrs Clinton suggest. But this, of course, would encourage driving and would send more profits to the oil companies and to the exporting countries. Mr Obama has opposed suspending the tax (although he joins Mrs Clinton in wanting a windfall tax on oil companies) saying it would save consumers less than $30 over the summer, and would take much-needed money out of the fund that maintains American roads and bridges. Mrs Clinton, for her part, says that her windfall tax would prevent any raid on the highway trust fund.

Voters have good reason to worry about energy, security and their environment. But they may have to get used to more pricey petrol. Historically cheap gasoline, partly as a result of low taxes, has enabled what even George Bush has called an American addiction to oil. More pricey oil might be one factor that reduces carbon emissions. And the candidates to be president will not, in any case, have the power to pull the oil price down again, whatever they may promise now.