Of course just two months ago, in a widely circulated missive, Palin attacked President Obama's plan to open up large swaths of the U.S. coastline to potential drilling for being too little, too late. "[L]et's not forget," she wrote, "that while Interior Department bureaucrats continue to hold up actual offshore drilling from taking place, Russia is moving full steam ahead on Arctic drilling, and China, Russia, and Venezuela are buying leases off the coast of Cuba."
Palin: Oil Spill Proves We Were Right About 'Drill, Baby, Drill | TPMDC
I don't see how she is wrong here. One can argue that you don't want offshore drilling off the coast of the US, but there are huge resivours of oil between the US and Cuba, and offshore drilling will happen in the gulf no matter what we say about it. The drilling will be done by the Russians and the Chinese, whose environmental records are such that BP would be considered a model of environmental good citizenship.
18 months from now, we will have great reefs of oils floating in from Cuba if Russian history is anything to go by. We can't stop it, but we can manage it better.
And the US does want gasoline in large quantities. We either produce it here, under sensible regulation, or it comes in from places like Iran and Saudi, and it funds psycho groups. You get to make Hobson's choice. It is not a fun, easy, or happy choice. But if we are going to continue to consume gasoline at the rate we do, then it is a choice we have to make.