“Drill, Baby, Drill.” These words call to mind former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and the 2008 presidential election, when many Americans were outraged over $4/gallon gasoline prices, and many Republicans sought to solve this “problem” with increased drilling offshore and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. 

Palin popularized a phrase written by Michael Steele, then the Lieutenant Governor of Maryland, who went on to Chair the Republican Party.  As he recounted in an interview, he was writing the speech at 2 am the morning before he was due to give it, and felt he needed something catchy. He came up with “drill, baby, drill” — which brought to mind a phrase associated with the Black Panthers in the late 1960s, “Burn, baby, burn!” — but fretted that it might not be appropriate for a nationally televised speech.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaNiGwhmQeo

There was no need to fret. When Steele said the words, delegates at the convention immediately broke out in a “drill, baby, drill” chant, which continued into the fall presidential campaign (even though their nominee opposed drilling in ANWR and supported cap-and-trade legislation to limit carbon emissions). The chant conveyed an argument that increased drilling would lead to the cheap gasoline prices Americans need and deserve. 

Though it would be difficult to measure cause-and-effect impact, the chant correlated with a significant shift in party platform: In 2008, the Republican platform acknowledged human contribution to carbon levels and called for “technology-driven, market-based solutions that will decrease emissions, reduce excess greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, increase energy efficiency, mitigate the impact of climate change where it occurs, and maximize any ancillary benefits climate change might offer for the economy.” Four years later, even after a spill discharged 4.9 billion gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, the party all but adopted “Drill, baby, drill,” with a platform that opposed “any and all cap and trade legislation” and demanded that Congress “take quick action to prohibit the EPA from moving forward with new greenhouse gas regulations.” 

In her piece, “Petro-masculinity: Fossil Fuels and Authoritarian Desire,” Cara Daggett addresses this Palin-Republican belief that Americans have a right to cheap fossil fuels:

“No wonder that access to cheap and plentiful gas and energy became the sine qua non for American well-being, and a right demanded both of the state and for the state. Even as Americans in the 21st century disagree about whether health care or food should be considered a right, there is a widespread, bipartisan assumption that Americans deserve cheap energy, and that the state has a duty to ensure it. In turn, any threat to energy supply appears simultaneously as a threat to the American dream and, in turn, the dominant position of the US in the world.”

And though her argument focuses on masculinity, Daggett acknowledges that more than half of white women voters were drawn to a different slogan, “Make America Great Again.”  These women (presumably Palin included), Daggett argues, find “security in the status quo, and therefore resent threats to fossil fuel systems and/or hegemonic white masculinities.”

Daggett also makes direct reference to Palin: “Fossil fuel systems provide a domain for explosive letting go, and all the pleasures that come with it – drilling, digging, fracking, mountaintop removal, diesel trucks. In the words of Sarah Palin, ‘drill, baby, drill!’”

Of course, the obsession with cheap oil and fossil fuel reliance flies in the face of environmental experts. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported in 2018 that carbon pollution would have to be cut by 20 percent by 2030 to limit warming to 2 degrees Celsius, or by 45 percent by 2030 to limit warming to 1.5 degrees. And in the largest public statement of economists in history, more than 3,500 economists from both sides of the political aisle signed a statement calling for a tax on carbon — not a reduction in prices, as Palin and others have called for — as key to limiting greenhouse gases. 

Cheap oil is not a right, as it passes enormous costs onto future generations.

For Palin, “Drill, baby, drill” wasn’t just a slogan or proposed policy, it was tantamount to a divine mandate. In the years since the 2008 campaign, she coupled “drill, baby, drill” with a reference to our oil reserves as “God-given resources,” suggesting that our Creator intended for Americans to drill and extract oil. 

In 2015, while suggesting she would accept a position as US Secretary of Energy in a future Trump administration, Palin said, “Oil and gas and minerals, those things that God has dumped on this part of the Earth for mankind’s use instead of us relying on unfriendly foreign nations … No, we’re not going to chill. In fact, it’s time to drill, baby, drill down.”

If Palin is looking to God for energy policy, she should drill down instead on Pope Francis’ Laudato Si: On Care for Our Common Home and the words of other Christian leaders who believe combatting climate change is a moral issue.