My response to the "Drill here, drill now" arguement

Click here to read a small article explaining the rationale behind the, "drill here, drill now" arguement.

I found this article featured on Reddit.com and if you don't know what it is, it's a great way to procrastinate and learn new fun things at the same time.

Reddit allows you to comment on people's posts and I couldn't help but offer my opinion on the "Drill here, drill now" article/debate.

Enjoy my comments regarding the article, and if you disagree with me, great! Please disagree in the "comments" section and I will follow up. I love a healthy debate!

Why the "Drill here, drill now" arguement does not work anymore:

I appreciate a good healthy debate and I respect the writer's opinion in why American should drill now so we can pay less. However, I completely and utterly disagree with the opinion that we should continue to drill. I disagree for many reasons and here is just a few.
1) Drilling now would not rebuild the already tattered American economy, especially since oil companies have continued to make record profits while the US economy has been on the down turn for a while. If you look at the US economy in the past 5 years and compare it to the profit margins of the leading oil companies in the last 5 years, one might wonder how drilling for oil will help unemployed U.S. citizens.

2) The jobs "created" by drilling for oil now would only apply to places where we would need to drill, all of which are outside the continential US (aka not Alaska). Since the U.S. has already tapped all of their own resources I don't understand how oil exploration will provide more jobs for U.S. citizens.
However, alternative sources of energy would create a huge array of jobs all over the US because the energy (like wind, solar, etc.) can be harnessed and produced within the US which literally means more jobs staying in the States rather than being outsourced. Expaniding the underdeveloped alternative energey field would not only create more jobs for Americans but it would help catch up with our European allies who have already made alternative energy a priority (and Obama recently made it one too). Please click here to read more to find out the latest developments in "green-collar jobs."

3) The last comment is a time old opinion that states we should let the market "fix" itself and not let the government interfere. I'm sorry but that is not an option anymore. Adam Smith might have believed that an "invisible hand" would regulate the marketplace therefore no need for government interference, but he has been long dead and he would be rolling in his grave if he saw the state of the economy today. It is the lack of regulation within the international marketplace that got us in this mess in the first place.
Furthermore, Joseph Stiglitz (economist) argues that the anti-regulation ideology played a huge part in causing the financial breakdown. Don't believe me? Read it for yourself.
Also, it has been shown that more socialist minded countries have not been as hard hit by the economic down-turn because they refused to allow risky financial endevours to take place (i.e sub-prime mortgage crisis) Canada is great example of this. Although they are super dependent on the U.S. for trade they never allowed (nor allow) their banks to mess with the whole sub-prime mortgage fiasco.

To sum up why the "drill here, drill now" arguement does not work is because it is based on the assumption that oil is not a limited resource; but it is!!! Once you suck all the liquid (oil) out of the cup (Earth), there is non left to take, so the "drill here" part of the arguement is utterly unsustainable. The other part of the arguement stating, "drill now" bascially just ensures that we run out sooner rather than later, and then what kind of predicament will we be in?

In short, why keep drilling when we already know there isn't enough to sustain mankind?

Unless we want to sustain life after our generation I just don't agree that we should drill anywhere anytime soon.

UPDATE, March 13: Here is an article put out by google.org that outlines how solar energy will create up too 400,000 permenant, full-time jobs in America, especially in states like Michigan and Pennsylvania that need help the most. In addition to exploring the job growth numbers, you can view a 3-D simulation of the job growth over time and compare the solar energy resources of each state with their job growth potential.
Click here to find out more.