The reality is that most alternative energy sources are as many years out as the timeline to bring any new wells on-line. Many hailed corn based ethanol as the great alternative energy source, but many scientists now agree that isn’t such a great idea. But both McCain and Obama support it, mainly to placate the farm lobby like any good pandering politician should. Most high volume non-corn based ethanols are at least a decade out if not more. The fact of the matter is that if gasoline gets much above $7.00/gal it will have a horrendous impact on the economy, decimating the car industry, airlines, etc. It will also raise the price of everything you buy, including food, since a large percentage of goods are trucked in America.
Even if tomorrow someone invented a super battery making electric cars more viable, then you face the problem of having to build hundreds of more power plants to charge them. So on what do you run all these new power plants? No one wants to burn more coal than we do already, and they don’t want to drill for more natural gas, and it would be prohibitively expensive to blanket the country with wind farms or solar panels, you are pretty much left with nuclear. As it stands, it takes years to get a nuclear power plant built, even if the political will existed.
A reasonable approach is to drill more domestically but keep gasoline prices high enough to make alternative energy economically viable so as to induce a softer landing for the economy. If we let gas get to $10.00/gal, the economy would be in such shambles that I guarantee anyone sitting in the White House would be gone and his replacement would be swept into office on a “drill now!” platform in a landslide. Hell, a recent poll shows the majority of Americans support more domestic drilling right now, at $7.00/gal they will be protesting in front of the White House!
Should we drill in Anwar? Yep, but there and for any other environmentally sensitive place, I would require the respective oil company to post an ginormous bond that would be forfeited should they fuck it up.