Invest, baby, invest!

Despite positive economic news in last week's jobs report, President Barack Obama has seen his approval rating slide in recent weeks. Rising gas prices are certainly a factor, and a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll found that 65 percent of those polled disapproved of the president's handling of gas prices.
As the presidential election looms, gas prices and energy look to be hot-button issues. Obama has argued that he is largely powerless to combat rising oil prices, which, he says, are spiking due to increased demand from India and China and due to uncertainty about a war between Israel and Iran.
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney in turn said Obama's assessment is a thinly veiled attack on "muscular" Republican rhetoric about Iran. Romney further argued that Obama's opposition to the Keystone XL oil pipeline and drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is indicative of an energy policy contributing to high gas prices.
The arguments do not seem to have changed from four years ago, when, in support of offshore oil drilling, then-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin made "Drill, baby, drill!" one of the campaign's most memorable catchphrases.
Obama can't be accused of ignoring calls for increased domestic oil production, as in March 2010 the administration proposed opening up new areas for offshore drilling. Of course, only one month later, Americans saw the potential dangers inherent in offshore oil drilling when the Deepwater Horizon explosion left 11 dead and resulted in an estimated 205 million gallons of oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico.
None of this fiery rhetoric even begins to address global warming, which has been ignored in the public discourse in recent years - outside of attacks on the scientific evidence supporting it.
With the economy still recovering from the Great Recession and gas prices rising 12 cents per gallon in two weeks, it's easy to look the other way when environmental and economic considerations collide. A recent study at the University of Connecticut found that public skepticism concerning evidence for global warming increases dramatically during tough economic times.
Not only has discourse about global warming been lost recently, but so too has the discussion of a long-term energy policy that includes ample investment in green energy.
Despite far-fetched claims like those of Newt Gingrich, who stated that his proposed energy policy alone can drive gas prices down to $2.50 per gallon, the fact is that high gas prices are a fact of life from here on out. Politicians need to shift away from playing the blame game about gas price increases and look to the future. It's supremely disappointing that political discussions about green energy have regressed so drastically since the 2008 campaign, when both Obama and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) were praising the possibilities of job creation in the renewable energy sector.
We understand that in economically unstable times, it is easy to push issues such as green energy into the background. But simultaneously helping the environment and reducing our reliance on oil is too good of an opportunity to pass up. In light of the rising gas prices, we urge politicians to stop allowing the issue to slip down their agendas and instead to do all they can to further facilitate innovation in the field.