Teh stupid

I made this prediction what seems like a long time ago now in a guest post at a now-defunct enviro-blog: we will drill for oil in Alaska; the only question is when and under what circumstances. Given $125+ crude, I now predict the answer to the first question to be 'during this upcoming presidency', whoever we elect.

That leaves us with the question of whether we will elect someone who will attempt to take full advantage of the low hanging fruits of increased vehicle efficiency and have the guts to invest in infrastructure that offers the public alternative tranportation options to the car...or if we'll elect someone who likely will be tempted to listen teh stupid:

This would seem to be an explosive campaign issue (if the candidates disagreed), especially if someone could offer a rough estimate of how many billion barrels of oil are in no-go areas, times them by $120 a barrel, and then compute how many trillions in national wealth we leave untouched while we pay our enemies for the commensurate alternative. I could accept the argument that it will take years to get the oil out of Alaska, the coasts, or other federal lands and therefore is not worth it (the classic argument for stasis), if we could be convinced it will not take even a greater amount of time to get solar and wind technology cheap and efficient enough to produce the bulk of our energy needs.

A postscript: I'm not sure that, ecologically speaking, drilling oil in about 2000 acres in the north of Alaska is all that different from dotting our mountain ridges and coasts (ask the Kennedys et al) with enormous windmills or creating vast acres of solar panels throughout our fragile deserts or covering our roofs with panels and pipes and assorted gadgetry.