We need to make a strategic commitment to alternatives that address the many-faceted problems that now attend our economy and national security policy - oriented around the premise and necessity of inexpensive hydrocarbons - at their root.

Drilling is not going to effectively address this pitch, as three decades in pursuit of that national energy, industrial, and security strategy has demonstrated. It was arguably the best strategy while we were the global geopolitical, economic, and military hegemon (with apologies to the Soviet Union, which in the end was revealed as principally but a foil for the American military-industrial complex).

The cost of “petrol” in Europe is considerably higher than in the US. For example, using an average price per liter in July of USD1.0866 in the US, the equivalent amount of fuel in Western Europe was a bit higher than USD2.263, allowing for the weak dollar. Imagine what would happen here if gasoline were to rise to nearly nine bucks a gallon! Yet Europe is not a smoldering ruin. The reason is that the economy isn’t predicated on gas at prices so low that only oil-producing dictatorships offer it cheaper.

The reality is that demand for petroleum in the United States is heavily subsidized. Road building and maintenance are funded by property taxes at the local level; income and sales taxes subsidize road construction and maintenance at the state level; income taxes subsidize roads at the federal level. The interstate highway system subsidizes the trucking industry and that subsidy is passed along to the distribution network and the manufacturers and importers and exporters who rely on it. Our need and ability to provide the petroleum companies with strong positions in the global petroleum industry is massively subsidized by our ability to project military power from Groton, Newport News, San Diego and Seattle to the Suez Canal, the Strait of Hormuz, and the Caspian Basin.

Petroleum is a global commodity priced principally in dollars. Subscribers to the supply-side school of economics know that it argues that increasing the supply and lowering the price of a product increases demand, right?

So drilling for oil in environmentally sensitive areas is not going to alleviate the problem. At best, it will have a marginal impact on the price at some point in the future.

Incidentally, nobody is talking about dropping an oil derrick in Long Island Sound. Did the title hit your NIMBY button?

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The rise in home foreclosures in the rest of the the country have produced a series of news reports on how abandoned homes are causing all sorts of issues. It’s an interesting petri dish of sprawl gone awry and the the clash of property rights versus property values. Whether its mosquito control over fears of West Nile virus, or vandals and squatters, the rise in foreclosed properties has prompted Governor Schwarzenegger to do something about it. Hence:

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Since the whole gist of global warming is all about the rise in CO2, paying attention to what higher amounts of CO2 encourage on the ground seems like an area ripe for scientific investigation. Which is what Duke University researchers discovered when they studies poison ivy in a controlled forst that has high levels of CO2 pumped into test plots. It turns out that poison ivy not only thrives in those conditions but that the stuff that causes the rash, urushiol, becomes more toxic.

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