McCain has flip-flopped his position on offshore drilling, pandered to the oil companies, and embraced the exact same strategy endorsed by the man McCain is trying so hard to run away from — President Bush. He must have a damn good policy reason:

“Tomorrow I’ll call for lifting the federal moratorium for states that choose to permit exploration,” McCain said. “I think that this and perhaps providing additional incentives for states to permit exploration off their coasts would be very helpful in the short term in resolving our energy crisis.”

Short-term? If only the facts supported that position. If only the man who wants to be the next president bothered to check the analysis by the current president’s own energy analysts.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) recently did a detailed study of the likely outcome of offshore drilling for their Annual Energy Outlook 2007, “Impacts of Increased Access to Oil and Natural Gas Resources in the Lower 48 Federal Outer Continental Shelf (OCS).” The sobering conclusion:

The projections in the OCS access case indicate that access to the Pacific, Atlantic, and eastern Gulf regions would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030.

And the impact of the projected 7% (!) increase in lower-48 oil production that might result in 2030 thanks to opening the OCS is … wait for it …

… any impact on average wellhead prices is expected to be insignificant.

Yes, the man who would be president has sold out his principles to garner support from the oil industry while achieving no benefit to the American gasoline-consuming public whatsoever even a quarter century from now!

To paraphrase Sir Thomas More in A Man for All Seasons:

“It profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world … but for ExxonMobil!”

So what price is McCain getting for auctioning off his principles?

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From Salon:

New research finds that the “rise and fall of ocean levels correlated more consistently with mass extinctions than any other factor.” Published in Nature this week, “Environmental determinants of extinction selectivity in the fossil record” (subs. req’d) explores “the close statistical similarities between patterns of marine shelf sedimentation and rates of extinction.”

On our current emissions path, the planet’s temperature by 2100 will be more than 4.5°C hotter than today, hotter than it was the last time the world was ice free and sea levels were some 250 feet higher (see here). This research supports the IPCC prediction that as global average temperature increase exceeds about 3.5°C [relative to 1980 to 1999], model projections suggest significant extinctions (40-70% of species assessed) around the globe.

But really, who needs other species anyway? What have they ever done for us?