My admiration for the wit and wisdom of Charles Krauthammer never ceases. He asks, "Why are we drilling in 5,000 feet of water in the first place?" Good question. We have more oil in the Dakotas and Wyoming, Utah, Colorado in oil shale deposits than the Arabs have, but these have been under a moratorium from development for 30 years. This oil is recoverable by a similar process to that used to draw natural gas out of subterranean coal seams. You drill into the seam and fracture it all around the drill bore and then pump out whatever liquid begins to seep out. With coalbed methane, this means pumping up water at first, but as the pressure in the seam is released the amount of water goes down and the amount of gas goes up.

Shale beds not too deep can be mined like coal and the oil extracted. Environmentalists hate mines, but they're unwilling to admit that they would be preferable and easier to reclaim than the leak we're watching in the Gulf of Mexico.

The sooner Americans figure this out and get fed up with being dictated to by these
nitwits, the better off we'll all be. We don't need the government to force us to accept alternate energy sources if they become truly economically viable. Nobody likes smog, any more than earlier generations liked horse manure or coal soot, but we aren't going to get to the next stage without a robust economy.