NYT: A sensible and useful middle ground

[impik]

NYT Editorial

For years, the debate over offshore drilling for gas and oil has been a war of sound bites between the “drill now, drill everywhere” crowd that dominated the Bush administration and the Republican campaign in 2008, and members of the environmental community who would leave the country’s outer continental shelf untouched.

Neither provided a satisfying answer to the twin demands of reducing this country’s dependence on foreign oil and protecting precious coastal areas. On Wednesday, President Obama struck a sensible middle ground.

He announced a decision to expand oil and gas exploration in selected areas of America’s coastal waters that will satisfy neither extreme but is, on the whole, a careful and useful addition to the steps he has already taken to reduce the nation’s energy dependence.

Mr. Obama noted pointedly and correctly that increased oil and gas drilling cannot possibly address the country’s long-term energy needs. It should be seen as just one element of his broader energy strategy — including fuel efficiency standards to be announced on Thursday, big investments in alternative fuels in the stimulus package and new loan guarantees for nuclear power.

The new strategy — the result of more than a year of work by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar — also confronts an essential political reality: the Senate will insist on offshore drilling as part of a broader bill, expected after Easter, addressing climate change and other energy-related problems. Mr. Obama is trying to anticipate and shape that discussion by identifying areas that he thinks can responsibly be opened for exploration while quarantining others...

Thank god for the life outside the Left blogosphere.

[neverforget]

1. We have 2% of the world's oil reserves but use 20%. How the hell is drilling

for this little bit of oil going to help when it's at least 10 years down the road from now ? But I'm on the extreme because I think it's stupid.