You make a good point. I’m all for drilling up the country. I think it’s too soon for $4 gasoline, and more importantly I think it’s bad that money is going to foreigners, instead of staying in our own country.
But over time, we need to change our uses of oil so we can keep total demand down to sustainable levels. The high prices are accelerating that push, which is a good thing. My hope is we can start drilling, get gasoline down below $3 a gallon, get oil back to where plane flight is reasonable again, and people can heat their homes.
But not so cheap that we forget that we need to move on to better things, to electric or other power for cars, to nuclear power and clean coal for electricity, to better solar panel technology, to better energy-saving technology.
And yes, to the average person changing their lifestyle so they are less burdensome to the planet (not because they care about the planet, but because “less burdensome” saves money).
If we all had to pay the TRUE costs to the planet for our actions, we’d have become less burdensome years ago. Instead, like how people drove up their credit card debt, and many then simply defaulted, we are driving up our planetary debt, and I guess we think we can default later — except you can’t default on the planet.
Some day people will realise that a 15-lane highway isn’t the best use of the land we have available to us.
I wager that gas will never be less than $3.50 again, even if we start drilling. This a problem of global supply and demand. It’s only going to get worse. However, I do understand that you only mean to drill as stop-gap, and we’re otherwise on the same page. I think leaving the prices high is the best way for the free market to figure out what the best alternative is, rather than have the government expand drilling and then expect the government to figure out what we’re going to do next.
Less burdensome to the planet? It sounds like you've been smoking the democRAT crack!
You know, I really think things are different now. If gas prices dropped, I think there'd still be a push for drilling and alternative fuels. Why? Because now, more than ever, the average person does NOT want to be beholden to the countries in the Middle East. The political will of the people will remain after prices drop, IMO.