Bush has little say:

In another push to deal with soaring gas prices, President Bush on Monday will lift an executive ban on offshore drilling that his stood since his father was president. But the move, by itself, will do nothing unless Congress acts as well.

So much for the decider.

I continue to see the best course of action here for Democrats is to use the drilling as a bait to switch our nation's course onto renewable footing. Everything I've read from Congress watchers says that the pro-drill offshore votes are there, both in the Senate and the House. At the least, they'll lessen it from 200 miles to 50, and leave ANWR off limits. Likewise, its very doubtful that there will even be any exploration of oil done there anytime soon. It's nothing but a political bludgeon for Republicans to use against Democrats.

So the options are, stick to a "no offshore drilling" principle for the US (and watch it still pass), or give in on that 'nothing' in order to get 'something' bigger.

I say 'nothing' because for all the NIMBY clamoring I read on these threads, there's certainly not much of a noise being made about all the offshore drilling that's being done in Venezuela, or out elsewhere in the Gulf but besides the US, and the Gulf shore is where the bulk of the 'hypothetical' offshore drilling would be (and Alaska)-- Congress can just as easily attach a opt-out feature for states like CA & OR (and there's very little off of VA).

The 'something' could be whatever we can get, throw it all in there (higher CAFE standards, renewable funding, conservation efforts...) the 'compromise', which would be the biggest 'get' by the US environmental backers in decades, is there for the taking.

I'm convinced that Republicans are going to go whole-hog on bilking the government for funding of renewable exploration. The Pickens Plan is just the tip of the iceberg. Yes, renewable fuel is going to be a big business too now.

This has been a strong Democratic position over Republicans for decades. Democrats have a lot of capital in the bank over environmental issues, but now that the chips are down, and $4 gas is here, its the time. Peak Oil is here, and the Republicans are changing their tune:

For more than two decades, conservatives have put up almost every conceivable roadblock to a sane energy policy. They have essentially said to peak oil -- and catastrophic global warming, for that matter -- "Bring it on!"

Its a dangerous strategy for Democrats to be cast as playing the 'blame game' while Republicans promote a 'solution' to the energy problem. Because no longer is the Republican position going to be to just be about fossil fuels either, there's money to be made.

No one should be surprised we are now mired in a tar pit of growing dependence on oil imported from unstable or undemocratic regions, oil prices over $100 a barrel, a trade deficit in oil alone approaching $500 billion a year, and, of course, the very serious threat of catastrophic climate change from burning an ever-increasing amount of fossil fuels.