Drill Drill Drill
(posted by Daniel Koffler)
Some important context for the post below: Palin was trying to say something in response to a question about the inconvenient truth that the overwhelmingly majority of Alaskan oil and other energy is sold on the international market, not domestically, and will continue to be sold primarily abroad if we start to DRILL, BABY, DRILL!!!1!!1!! in ANWR. The reserves in ANWR, in any event, are a drop in the bucket relative to the global supply of petroleum. Hence DRILL DRILL DRILLING will have an indiscernible effect on global petroleum prices. What we can be sure of, though, BABY, if we DRILL, DRILL, BABY, DRILL, DRILL, is that by signing the DRILL DRILL DRILL DRILL BABY Act of 2009, President McCain will effectively forestall any robust effort to curb the effects of global warming and climate change that even conservative models predict will be catastrophic — this country has limited reserves of political will, and the conventional wisdom on a national DRILL DRILL DRILL initiative will be that the final solution to the energy crisis has been foisted onto the next generation, which will thereby be deprived of even the modest leeway we have today solved.
Ezra Klein is probably right that in 50 years, people will look back on DRILL, BABY, DRILL as an embarrassing artifact of a maniacal determination not to avert an epochal disaster while there was still time, that (thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster) will never happen again. Then they’ll go back to their jobs installing solar panels on the charred surface of the earth so that the remnant of humanity living in the mine-shaft space below can enjoy a standard of living not too far below that of North America and Western Europe c. 1950.