I would agree with you with respect to developing our native reserves of oil and modernizing our refineries. I do not think getting rid of the environmental restrictions entirely is appropriate. However, balancing the competing interests can be accomplished by a judicious relaxation of the law while preserving the environment to some extent within an immediate drilling area.
The bioshere is a commodity also. Case in point is the rain forest of Brazil. There is concern with the reduction of oxygen output by Brazil's clearing of the rain forest for expanded human habitation. It is not too difficult to foresee a time when the rain forest is treated as a marketable commodity, and leased to other nations for profit to preserve oxygen output. There is also a concern with the actic and antarctic ice sheet melt that may shift warm water conveyors such as the Gulf Stream, and thus change our climate to a more frigid state. I recently heard a British arctic explorer say that it had been ten years between his visits to the arctic. He was surprised to see that the pack ice had receded thirty miles from global warming during that time. I would also recommend the research and development of "green" fuels (Brazil successfully uses sugar based ethanol...apparently it is cheaper to produce than the corn based ethanol we use) as part of our development of alternate forms of energy.
It is going to take several years to pursue the above options before we experience a return to affordable fuel prices. In the interim the only party with enough clout to deal with the oil producing nations is the federal government. I have no problem with the retaliatory pricing measures they are considering.
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