Sibling rivalry at the top levels of government in the US will shine useful national light on the issue of offshore oil and gas leasing.
It is not especially important, of course, that the governor of Florida and president of the United States disagree over leasing and happen also to be brothers.
But the sibling angle makes a story out of it, which calls attention to Floridian attitudes about offshore drilling and production. Those attitudes are Neanderthal.
In a Jan. 23 letter to acting Interior Sec. Tom Slonaker, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush opposed Outer Continental Shelf Lease Sale 181 of blocks in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico. The Interior Department included the sale in a schedule it released in December.
Bush doesn't want there to be any leasing in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico, even in waters off neighboring Alabama. Sale 181 tracts off Florida are at least 100 miles offshore. But some of the acreage on offer off Alabama lies within 30 miles of Florida.
For Jeb Bush, that's too close.
"Few other issues so complete unite Floridians," he wrote.
Floridians, in that case, have faulty ideas that someone needs to correct.
An editorial in the Jan. 23 Tampa Tribune revealed the lack of sophistication on these matters that is apparently rampant in the Sunshine State.
"Oil and gas drilling is dirty business," the editorial said. "If offshore drilling were allowed, pollution would be a certainty."
Nonsense. Modern oil and gas drilling is in fact very tidy business. The ocean liners and work boats that crowd Florida's coasts, many within sight of downtown Tampa, create far more pollution than drilling and production ever would.
The editorial praised the governor for his letter to Interior and for writing the Commerce Department in 1999 to oppose what it called "an outrageous plan by Chevron to develop a full-production natural gas well just 25 miles off the Panhandle coast. So far, fortunately, the project has not been approved."
How on earth does the Tribune think gas development might threaten the coast?
Apparently, what most unites Floridians about oil and gas drilling is a chronic absence of facts about an industry essential to their well-being.
It is the right of all free people, of course, to stay ignorant about complex subjects. But ignorance should not preclude lawful development of natural resources needed by all Americans on land owned by all Americans.
Floridians, to the extent Jeb Bush and the Tampa Tribune accurately reflect their collective attitude, are wrong about oil and gas drilling. And their rigid opposition to Sale 181 conflicts with national interests.
Individually, they need oil and gas as much as anyone else. And their state's tourism industry is wholly dependent on the ready supply of transportation fuel.
In their stance against Sale 181, Floridians are working against both themselves and other Americans. Jeb's older brother should exert national leadership and set the record straight.