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dmoran

The reason the chant is "drill, baby, drill" is because that is the area where the parties disagree. We already agree on "wind, baby, wind" and other alternatives. Where we disagree is on whether immediately switching to alternatives and conservation can alone meet our energy needs for the next several decades. Energy professionals say no way. Not only is drilling going to meet only a fraction of our needs, the same is true of conservation and alternatives for many years. For instance, if we were to immediately get 3 million conventional cars swapped out for 3 million cars getting 100 miles to the gallon, the impact would be to reduce our annual oil use by only 1%. Obama is hoping to get 1 million plug-in hybrids on the road by 2015. Conservation is actually the only way to make a more sizeable impact immediately, but that won't do it alone either.

Drilling would only partially replace fields on which we currently depend which are in decline. We would still need to move toward alternatives. Obama said that drilling is a "stopgap measure" in his speech. What he did not say is that he seems willing to consider it as a necessary stopgap and is looking at it seriously. McCain was right when he said the two sides need to stop rejecting good ideas merely because the other side thought of it first. Democrats had a good reason to oppose drilling when it was a major threat to the environment. But now that there are effective improvements in drilling technology and we are facing an energy crunch which could seriously damage world economies in the coming decades, we all need to embrace a "do everything" approach.