Offshore Drilling Ban to be Lifted by Bush

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Originally Posted by Sub la Goon

It feels like Big Oil is getting really nervous about losing their White House meal ticket (and maybe even to a Democrat!) and is jacking up the prices as high as they can while GWB is still is POTUS.

Yep. The next one is much less likely to be in their pocket. W has been a great friend to the oil companies.

Originally Posted by Ghoulish Delight

(Cost/benefit analysis of drilling ANWR)

NET RESULT: Either we run out of oil in about 100 years but have given important ecosystems the best chance of survival, or we successfully find alternatives to oil within the next 100 years and have given important ecosystems the best chance of survival. All with little to no effect on consumer prices of oil in the meantime.

Originally Posted by Ghoulish Delight

To me, there is one, and only one, endgame. Get off of oil. Delaying the depletion of oil, shifting the source of oil while we're depleting it are meaningless bandaids. We're dead if we don't get off oil and the window to do so is smaller than the time needed for any of this drilling to do us any good.

That's where I stand. The debate over domestic oil versus foreign oil still assumes an addiction to oil. Let's find other ways to do this. Stop using oil entirely.

I don't approve of drilling in sensitive areas. ANWR has only a small area scheduled to be drilled, but the impact is much wider than just the drilling rigs. Pipelines, vehicle traffic, construction traffic, spills, the waste and pollution from the men working the rigs, and various other disruptions and other factors unforeseen.

The debate comes down to valuing the environment (a soft benefit) over anything that humans want (a hard cost when we have to give something up). Humans have run roughshod over any environment we have touched. At what point do we have a responsibility to say "enough"? I think we're there.