We need the oil, period.
Drill everything. We need to move AWAY from dependence on foreign oil. (Plus we need to aggressively develop any and all forms of non-petroleum based fuels.. synthetics, air, wind, solar power, advanced storage cells for solar, Hydrogen, absolutely everything...)
I'm a big fan of windmills, over hill, over dale... and off the coast.
The problem is, is that all the liberals with ocean front properties don't want THEIR ocean views "ruined" for their 98.653 million dollar beach front properties. Waaah!
With enough extra cash, I would gladly PAY $100M to buy a house [on a rocky ocean promontory - no sand..] with a dedicated ocean view of a few hundred off-shore windmills and a few oil platforms in the distance. We are talking about National Survival.
The windmills could double as an art/painting project for all the liberal artsy types out there. Monet would do the scene justice, I guess.
Yes, we are in a bind. The warning in 1973 was ignored. This year, 2005, seems to be the peak world oil production year. Drilling the coastal areas won't change that. Unless some more 20 billion barrel easy oil patches are found soon, and it has been a serious while, we are going to be strip mining tar sands and that will not be cheap.