It’s that number on the street corner you cringe away from. The talking point on the news from which you find you must flip away. The infuriating necessity that hungrily burns through your savings faster than the payments for that expensive car it fills.
Our relationship with gas has always been one of love and hate. We’ve always loved it for our cars, hated it for our environment. Now that gas prices have recently fallen from their all-time high, it seems we’ve only started to realize how we cling to the stuff like a drug. Our dependency—our addiction—to gas needs to come to an end, but simply looking for alternatives isn’t going to be sufficient for these times.
Currently we get our oil from the Middle East. Let’s face the facts, though—some governments over there don’t exactly like us. Even worse than this, they have the power to cripple us; should we continue to depend on them? All they have to do is stop shipping oil over to us and we are going to be in a good deal of trouble. And they know this. Gas prices are high because they know they can be and we will continue buying. Open your eyes! They are milking us for all we’re worth.
Let’s take a look at Anwar, for example. Beautiful, untapped potential. Put there for a reason. Now, please explain to me this—why are the Chinese allowed to drill only miles off our shores, and we aren’t? Why can’t we fuel ourselves?
Oh, that’s right. The environment. Or, as some argue, the caribou.
Think back to when that central pipeline was put in Alaska. There was a huge uproar from the tree-hugger society—“You’re going to kill the caribou!” “Their natural environment will be interrupted!” The latter, of course, is inevitable, but the first statement turned out to be complete and utter hogwash. Should anyone look up the records, they would find the caribou population has actually nearly doubled since the introduction of this pipeline. Caribou aren’t dumb. The pipes generate heat, and during the winter months, the animals have found them to be quite nice to lie against. Less caribou have frozen to death since then—the pipeline, contrary to popular belief, saved lives.
Now to the point most people fixate themselves on. The hit the environment will take should we drill on our shores. Oil spills, of course, are heartbreakingly devastating and nothing anyone ever wants to see happen. Talk to anyone who works in the drilling technological facilities, however, and they will all tell you the same—the new technology that has been developed has made it possible for people to reach the oil with minor harm to the environment. Sure, it’ll be a bit of an eyesore, but many of the places they wish to drill are so out in the middle of nowhere that you’d have to really be looking for them to be able to find them. An oil spill with these technologies, say the technicians, would be unheard of.
So what are we waiting for? America needs other forms of fuel. But we’re not going to discover them overnight, and having our pockets sucked clean by the people who have the oil overseas isn’t going to help us in any way. We need to drill now, here, and stop dishing out the cash. By doing so, we will project a powerful message to the world—we are America. We are united, self-sufficient, and dependant on only ourselves.
