WaPo Editorial on Drilling

'Snake Oil'
Debunking three 'truths' about offshore drilling

Surprisingly centrist editorial that takes on some of the misleading, or outright false claims that the anti-drilling environmentalists often make. While I give the editors at the WaPo credit for doing that (although not too much, when you reach the point where even Obama and Nancy Pelosi are trying to achieve some "nuance" in their positions on drilling, I guess it's not too surprising to see the media following suit), in the course of "debunking three 'truths' about offshore drilling," the editors contribute a few of their own, namely:

Contrary to the baldly political suggestions regarding lower gasoline prices by President Bush and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), drilling would make no impact on today's pain at the pump because it would be years before any oil flowed from the Outer Continental Shelf.

Seriously? Have these people been paying zero attention to oil prices recently, or do they simply have no understanding of how market speculation works? President Bush had but to casually mention that he was perhaps pondering the idea of rethinking the ban on drilling, and oil prices have been dropping ever since! And even if, for some strange reason, the greedy, evil oil speculators for some reason decide to go against every law of economics and continue buying oil in the face of the potential for a vastly increasing supply down the road, why is this an argument against drilling? This is the same argument that liberals and enviromentalists have been making for decades now, that drilling won't produce results for years. At what point is someone (besides Jay Leno) going to stand up and state the obvious, that if drilling truly won't produce results for years, maybe we should get started now!?

We agree that the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, with its varied and sensitive ecosystems, should be preserved. In the quest for new sources of energy, there
are trade-offs. That pristine area must remain off-limits.

This endlessly repeated meme needs to die, and quick. This is another case where the editors either have absolutely zero grasp of the facts involved, or else they simply don't care about the facts and are going to just continue parroting the party line entire the Post goes the way of so many other venerable newspapers. ANWR is not some pristine land of glistening lakes, surrounded by endless herds of caribou and other wildlife, bordered by snowcapped mountains and verdent forests. There are certainly some strikingly beautiful parts, but particularly in the relatively tiny percentage that would be drilled on, it's a veritable wasteland, indistinguishable from acres and acres of tundra elsewhere. To mortgage our countries future by allowing us to be held hostage by our enemies for the sake of a few acres of wilderness is asinine.