New approach: one topic per post! Let’s see if this helps me get things published in a more timely manner.

“Like a drunk ransacking the house in hours of unearthing one more bottle, we can pollute the beaches and invade the last wilderness areas, searching for just one more big deposit of oil.” — Donnella Meadows, Thinking in Systems, pg. 134

Indeed, opening all of America’s coasts to drilling would lower gas prices by 2¢. (Original EIA source is Table 9 here.) I’m sure that opening up America’s playgrounds and backyards to drilling won’t make a difference, either; this finite resource is largely gone from these shores, and no amount of wishing will bring cheap, easy, domestic oil back. Idiots like a certain presidential candidate who promise to halve gas prices remind me of a definition of insanity, from folks who might know about addiction: doing the same thing over again, but expecting different results.