George W. Bush wasn’t to blame when gas prices surged above $4.50 a gallon in summer 2008, and President Barack Obama is not responsible for the 30-cents-a-gallon spike we’ve seen since December.

During Bush’s second term, speculative trading, a weak dollar and growing demand from China and India were the culprits. Today, once again, Wall Street speculators are part of the reason, along with the uncertainty of supply from Iran and an increase in demand from the improving economy.

Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum are peddling the canard that Obama’s “radical environmentalism” is to blame. Real radical environmentalists only wish Obama was one of them.

The shortsighted GOP snipers want to ramp up offshore drilling and say the president should tap the nation’s emergency reserves to bring down prices, but they’re wrong. We didn’t drill ourselves out of the spike in 2008, and we can’t do it today.

Even under the most optimistic estimates by the Bush administration, drilling off the coast would have no significant effect on U.S. production for at least two decades. Even then, it would reduce prices by no more than 3 cents a gallon.

As to reserves: The U.S. holds 700 million barrels of oil, but that will supply the entire nation for only a month. Obama should keep every drop of it in case of a true emergency, especially given the volatility in the Middle East, which controls so much of the world supply.

The core problem decades ago is the same today: The United States holds less than 2 percent of the world’s oil reserves but consumes 25 percent of the world’s oil. We can’t drill enough to overcome that disparity.

The only thing that makes sense is to reduce reliance on oil through new technologies that, at the same time, will create jobs and make this country a world leader in green energy. That won’t happen overnight either, but at least it’s a forward-looking strategy.

Obama last week said this is the time to “double down on a clean energy industry that has never been more promising.”

He’s right.