Victor Davis Hanson

Worried frantic over a zit while cancer ravages much of the rest of your body?

In an interconnected global petroleum market, our energy appetites mean that drilling goes on at a breakneck pace throughout South America, Africa, the Middle East and Russia. Yet do we really think that the Russians can protect their Arctic tundra better than we could in Alaska, or that there will be less pollution from oil platforms off the Nigerian coast than off California or Florida?

Homegrown, clean-burning biofuels sound great as a partial replacement for polluting foreign petroleum. But at present, to supply grain-based ethanol, we are diverting a large percentage of American farm acreage away from food production. The result — apart from the net energy loss needed to grow and refine ethanol — is that the price of basic food staples is soaring.

It is politically incorrect to say so, but an oil well in Alaska might cause less damage to the world environment, less strain on our own food supply, and more savings to poorer American consumers than most of the present alternatives.1

America, sit in the corner and think about what you have done.