We can't drill our way out of this mess

But we can sure dig ourselves into a deeper hole.

Bush and McCain are eager to hand over the U.S. continental shelf to oil companies to allow for offshore drilling.

Problems:

• The oil companies have already leased 68,000,000 acres of federal lands for oil production but aren't using them as of yet. So why not give them a "use it or lose it" notice on those leases before handing them sensitive offshore areas or the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge?
• The best estimates I've seen suggest that drilling in these additional areas would only lower the price of a barrel of oil by a buck or two. That's just pennies off the price of a galon of gas.
• Production is a decade off... that's not going to help us in our short term squeeze and only puts off the inevitable: moving to sustainable energy sources like solar and wind. And we may need to rely more on nuclear as a bridge to get us there. It's also ignoring the best solution: energy efficiency which we can start putting into place today.

And one thing to remember when the issue of oil company profits comes up: a large portion of the land where U.S. oil comes from is owned by the federal government. In other words, it's ours, the American people's. The oil companies are just leasing it from us, and for ridiculously low amounts of money.