Okay, two things... Tomorrow I will visit the dentist who will probably do some drilling. I think it is fun except for the part at the end where I have to write a check to pay for it. Otherwise it is fairly relaxing. I wish they had a video camera so I could watch as I think it is fascinating.
Number two, I just read that a recent Pew Research Center poll of Americans shows that more and more Americans are for drilling in protected environments and less interested in energy conservation. This is very foolish, but perhaps it mirrors our national mindset. It doesn't matter how much we drill if we end up using more and more energy in the long run. Fossil fuels are widely believed to be a limited resource, and the rate that we are consuming them is not sustainable. It's like borrowing more and more money from more places to keep up a lifestyle or keep a house you cannot afford. In the end, there will be no more places to turn to and you will still end up losing it all.
Instead, we should look to conserve energy by spending it wisely and avoid wasting it. In the meantime, we also need to invest in the future by finding sources of renewable energy, which probably include everything from solar power, wind power, geothermal power, biomass-derived fuels, and everything else under the sun that we know is either essentially limitless and/or sustainable. To be totally honest, nobody really knows what we will lose for sure by possibly damaging the environment with excess petroleum drilling. But we only have one Earth and nowhere else to go, so is it really worth taking the risk?
