If we just had a Republican candidate with a pair who could say to the unions, “Back me, and I’ll push for oil drilling jobs in Alaska and North Dakota....”
drilling for more oil only delays the inevitable reckoning. Say ANWR has oil beyond the wildest geological expectations. It just puts more oil on the market to be bid up by China and India, and in ten years or whatever, we’re right back where we are now. Where’s the next big technology that gets us off oil altogether? I see news about little projects here and there, but no big breakthrough. We need another Manhattan Project, and I don’t see it happening. The Democrats want to tax the oil companies. The Republicans, when they talk about it at all, want to drill more wells and build more refineries. That’s great, but that alone won’t fix our long term energy problem.
I hate to be a pessimist, but I see nothing happening that will change things. The Energy crisis will be ‘solved’ when thw worldwide economy crashes due to stratospheric oil prices, and the price comes down because nobody can afford to buy it any more.