Drilling would take ten years to find oil (if it was there) and wouldn't do anything to lower gas prices.
That's not exactly true. Futures markets would immediately react to additional exploration efforts and prices would drop to some extent relatively quickly. How much of a drop is up for debate, and nobody is claiming that we're going back to prices of 2005 ever again. Regardless, 10 years is better than never. If congress had approved drilling in the ANWR during Clinton's term would we be reaping the benefits now? 10 years doesn't seem like that long if you look at it that way.
I'm certainly not of the belief that we can drill our way out of our energy woes. We absolutely need to press for an all encompassing energy plan and ANWR exploration would just be one small part of what, I believe, needs to be a major rethink in the way we supply and consume energy. Wholesale dismissal of this piece of the puzzle is simply partisan BS (vote chasing) that doesn't help any of us, regardless of ideological mindsets.
What about the other 68million unexplored acres of federal land already leased to the oil giants? Why give them new leases when they're not bothering to explore the leases they already own? <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/shrug.gif" alt="" />
These are high probability fields we are talking about. The potential to produce an additional 2 million barrels per day. The world consumption is about 80 million barrels per day, in the USA we import 12.5 million barrels a day.
We are in dire straits. We import oil valued at 4-5% of our Gross Domestic Product yearly. We will be paupers soon if that does not stop.
So we need to
1) produce more oil, as much as we can
2) use less oil by transferring the energy usage to other forms of energy
THIS IS NOT AN EITHER/OR PROPOSITION. THIS IS A MUST-DO-BOTH PROPOSITION.
That means electric cars, and plug-in hybrids must become the norm as rapidly as possible, because almost all of our oil usage is in transportation, mainly cars. And simultaneously, we need to drill aggressively. And get Iraq up to full capacity, and get Kuwait to pump more. We are not talking about some kinda panacea, just making the economically smoothest exit from our oil addiction that we can. Electrics and plug-in hybrids are by far the most viable solution - they can transfer 90% of our oil usage energy to the grid within 10 years.
Now, to handle that, the grid is gonna need a little priming of its own, but that is another story.