Before I get into this I should say that I do care about the environment. A lot. As a fisherman, hunter, canoeist, surfer and cyclist I am “in” the environment quite a bit. I want it to be clean. I want lots of healthy fish and animals available to me to humanely dispatch and put on my plate. I want the rivers and lakes to be clean and enjoyable. However, there is something that bugs me about many “environmentalists”. A disconnect between that which they say and do and the actual impact of those words and actions.
A few years ago during a period of exceptionally high oil prices the cry arose across the land; “Drill Here, Drill Now!” The acclamation was met with the specious argument that if we were to begin drilling now the impact on our domestic oil supply would not be felt for years…so we didn’t. We didn’t open up new permits for millions of square miles of near-shore & deepwater drilling opportunities on the East, Gulf and West Coast, we didn’t tap into ANWR, we didn’t go after the Colorado oil sands and we didn’t tap into the Bakken formation in the Dakotas. Well, it’s been quite a few years and here we are again. Oil is at or around $100 a barrel and batshit crazy lunatics in the Middle East threaten to drive the price even higher. What position might we be in had we decided to “open the taps” as it were on the massive domestic oil resources contained within our borders?
