Just two weeks ago, as you and I were still reeling from "Pump Shock", a panel in the U.S. House of Representatives voted AGAINST lifting the ban, a ban now in force for decades, on drilling for oil and natural gas in our nation's outer continental shelf. This despite the fact that China-yes, China!-is right now preparing, on behalf of the Cuban government, to tap into the extensive oil fields lying deep beneath the waters just a few miles south of Florida's Keys. And despite the fact that Great Britain, Denmark, and Norway, nations long known for their friendliness to the concerns of environmentalists, have for decades been extracting huge quantities of oil from underwater deposits lying off their shores and have done so with no damage to the environment. Finally, and almost beyond belief, the House panel's vote took no account of the fact that even when a thousand or more oil rigs were demolished in the Gulf of Mexico by Hurricane Katrina, there were no-repeat, NO- oil spills. The state-of-the-art technology that is used today for exploiting underwater oil deposits has been shown to be environmentally safe.
   Over the years, however, the powerful environmentalist lobby has developed an elaborate mythology based on the deficiencies of a long outmoded (and long since abandoned) technology, a technology that can only be described as primitive in comparison with what is used for drilling today. And this mythology is given additional credibility thanks to a propaganda linking oil-spills involving tankers to alleged dangers from drilling, even though oil-spills involving tankers have nothing whatsoever to do with the procedures involved in drilling but everything to do with careless navigation and in some instances with the use of single-hulled rather than double-hulled  ships.  This environmentalist mythology, with the backing of the lords of the media and a phalanx of left-wing politicians, has induced in Congress a chronic paralysis with respect to our nation's best interests, at least vis-a-vis the rational exploitation of the oil and natural gas reserves that lie within our maritime jurisdiction and that could be augmented further by the proper use of our vast shale and coal deposits, deposits that could be converted with existing  technology into immense quantities of fuel.
    Given the damage to our economy that the soaring price of a barrel of oil has already caused and will continue to cause with perhaps even escalating fury, and given the threat to our national security that comes from enslavement to foreign oil, it is supremely important that clearer thinking should come to prevail in the U.S. House and Senate.And the sooner the better! But don't hold your breath!
   Those who would maintain the existing restrictions on the exploitation of our own resources are disposed to argue that, even were we to reverse our present policy, it would take at least a decade before fulf-scale production could come on line. This is true. But what do we gain by further delay? An even greater catastrophe a decade from now? Others may say: why don't we produce more from those federal lands that have already been leased for drilling? The answer to which must take into account the inevasible fact that full-scale production is necessarily preceded by the time-consuming process of mapping and testing and the construction and installation of the equipment required, during all of which time the fields are officially listed as non-productive, though essential development is taking place.   Moreover one can plausibly surmise that once we are perceived by OPEC and other oil- producers to be getting serious at last about making use of our own reserves, OPEC may well decide to increase its own rate of production (and thus make possible some lowering of price) in the hope of inducing us to relax again, returning to our customary bondage to foreign oil. In addition a major national commitment to serious, well funded programs of research into alternative kinds offuet along the lines of the enterprise that produced the atomic bomb would restrain OPECs greed still more.
   And finally an important measure that we could fairly easily adopt would be to cut away all the legislative red tape that has thus far hindered for a third of a century the construction of American refineries. The last new refinery in the U.S.A. was built in 1976.

   May I share with you two persuasive discussions of the magnitude of the crisis with which we are faced, together with a proposal for programs that could set us on the right path at last if only Congress would act.  The essays appeared in a single issue of  The Wall Street Journal, the issue for June the twelfth. One presentation is an unsigned editorial. The other is an essay by a regular columnist for the Journal, David Henninger.