I say we move away from oil all together, and focus on new energy sources.
like magic!
seriously, there is nothing that replaces oil currently on the market. let's lower energy prices
while the technology improves to the point where we can have a viable alternative, instead of
choosing to keep ourselves poorer.
opening up domestic supply for drilling would be a jobs bonanza - of jobs that pay higher than the national average. It would lower energy prices, it would increase revenues, it would increase growth, and it would help pull us out of this slump. waiting for windmill-driven unicorns to bring us magical 'alternative' energy isn't a strategy, it's a hope that you keep while working on what you have today.
Increasing Domestic supply would become a powerful foreign policy multiplier. It gives us a world in which the US can use it's monopsony position to tell Chavez to get bent, a world in which we can reduce the strategic importance of the Middle East.
Critics point out that it would take time to get the wells up and running, and that current spikes are caused by speculators - they are partially correct. Futures markets serve as predictors of the price of oil in... well, the future. What do you think those "speculators", those futures traders are going to think about the future price of oil if they see that the supply is going to be massively increasing in said future?
Drilling here gives us jobs. It increases wages. It increases revenues in a time in which we are facing a debt crises. It grows the economy at a time when growth is anemic and we desperately need to get on a more sharply upward-curving track. It reduces our need to control the stability of foreign sources, increases our strength vis-a-vie our enemies, and gives America more control over her future.
Those who say America's best days are behind her? They haven't looked around. There are
huge ways in which we could
explode upward. We just gotta
use them.