When you drive along Highway 101 near Santa Barbara, or Highway 1 in Huntington Beach, it’s hard to miss the many oil rigs on the ocean’s horizon. They are relics of a bygone age – not just the 1960s, when they were constructed, but an age in which California believed that cheap oil would always be plentiful and available. We built an entire infrastructure around that and neglected trains, walkable neighborhoods, and lagged behind the rest of the world in developing solar and wind power.

Now the consequences of that misguided belief in the permanence of cheap oil have become clear. Gas prices are nearing $5, causing economic distress and sending Californians flocking to mass transit. For his part Barack Obama is proposing massive new investments in sustainable energy and rail infrastructure.

But what is instead dominating today’s news cycle is the Bush-McCain call for offshore oil drilling. The LA Times has an article today trying to convince us that offshore oil drilling opponents are “rethinking” their stance but the only California drilling supporter they quote is Republican Jerry Lewis.

It’s obvious that Republicans see opportunity in high gas prices to roll back sound environmental policies, such as the offshore ban. But for what gain? Drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would take 10 years to deliver oil to American pumps and would only meet  about 4-6 months of US domestic demand. California’s offshore oil pools would probably not produce much more than that.

Like McCain’s gas tax holiday, offshore drilling is a gimmick designed to avoid the necessary fixes. Americans need to understand that gas prices will never come back down, and that cheap oil is a thing of the past. It’s not something we have a right to – it’s something we had for a few decades, but now it is over.

Republicans don’t have a solution to high oil prices. Drilling in ANWR and off our coast would not ameliorate prices now, and wouldn’t do so in 10 years – the rate of decline in North Sea and Mexican oil exports will far outweigh the new drills and rising global demand will continue to drive up prices.

Democrats would do well to follow Obama’s lead and firmly reject McCain’s drilling plan. It’s time we accepted the fact that cheap oil is a thing of the past, instead of looking for more sources like a junkie desperately seeking another fix. We need to build a sustainable transportation infrastructure that will provide green jobs and economic development for the 21st century – instead of trying to string out the obsolete 20th century any longer.