Might As Well Face It, You're Addicted To Oil

The NY Times has a story about how a 1996 law (passed during the Clinton administration and later expanded by the Bush administration) is resulting in a huge windfall for oil companies who get oil from public lands:
U.S. Has Royalty Plan to Give Windfall to Oil Companies

The federal government is on the verge of one of the biggest giveaways of oil and gas in American history, worth an estimated $7 billion over five years.

Royalty-Free Oil and Gas New projections, buried in the Interior Department's just-published budget plan, anticipate that the government will let companies pump about $65 billion worth of oil and natural gas from federal territory over the next five years without paying any royalties to the government...

Have we reached a crazy point when Arnold Schwarzenegger is the sensible one?-
Governor to push global warming fight
Bold policy gambits expected in bid to lower greenhouse gases (San Francisco Chronicle)

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration is expected this month to release a plan to combat global warming that recommends raising petroleum prices and requiring industries to report, for the first time, their greenhouse gas emissions.

The increase in gas prices would fund research into alternative fuels.

The question is- Does he mean it literally?


[PS- Rep. Ed Markey has a good blog post on this-
White House- 'Addicted to Oil' or 'Conflicted by Oil'?]