Any potential price drop, even with a successful (but unlikely) governmental effort to keep the products of offshore drilling for the domestic market, wouldn’t happen until possibly 2030, according to some reports, by which time I would hope we’re all well on our collective way to some other primary source of energy (and Huw, you and I shall be poring over our retirement savings by then). Meanwhile, we will have the immediate environmental and economic costs of the oil spills, etc. which inevitably accompany drilling.

What do you think of my capitalist idea? Even if we have oil wells all over, unless we force them to give the oil to us (nationalisation) it won’t work, unless we bully the world back into a strong dollar and a weak everything else.

However, it is also not in the oil producing countries best interests to really have that happen. It could be a shortcut to military action against them if the prices begin destroying the world economy. This is why a couple of the countries have been trying so hard to talk the prices down. (They assume it is a bubble.)

The USA has a couple of problems in particular. We have not built an oil refinery since close to the middle of the last century. Anti-technology ecologists have made the process of licensing any new means of energy production so prohibitive that they have stopped even legitimately needed expansions. Their battle cry has been to essentially claim that any development of any type will permanently damage the environment, kill us all, and trigger the Apocalypse. They make a fundamentalist dispensationalist preacher sound positively benign. Unfortunately, they have a clout far larger than their numbers.

Recently, drilling for oil in previously protected areas has crossed the 50% approval line in national polls. As more than one commentator has pointed out, we need short-term and long-term plans. There is little doubt that drilling is not a short-term plan. However, to say it is no plan at all is simply more of the typical American short-sightedness. It is a plan for the mid-term, as the first oil wells could start producing before the next President finishes serving two terms in office. And, it may buy us the time we need to continue working on alternative methods of energy production, including nuclear.

BTW, one of the best ways to lower energy usage is to irradiate food so that it can be packaged and stored on shelves rather than on the refrigerator (until opened). This method is successfully used in several Global South countries without evidence of any ill effects to the populace. However, our friendly neighborhood anti-technology ecologists have done their busy little job in scaring people with no scientific evidence to back them up. After all, it is radiation so it must be bad, right?

I am very ecologically minded. My wife and I divide up our trash, keep the thermostat high in summer, etc. It is ecologists that I can’t stand.