Another Good reason for offshore drilling

By Ed Lasky

In the last paragraph of a Washington Post editorial on the end of the moratorium on offshore drilling in US waters is this statement:

More important, in a world of skyrocketing demand for energy, it is becoming untenable for the United States to consume 20 percent of the world's oil -- including from places where environmental concerns are equally relevant -- while doing nothing to explore its own shores for resources.

This brings to the fore an issue often ignored by environmental and others on the blue end of the political spectrum. We may shield America to some extent from the risks of pollution and environmental harm but a the cost of conflicting with another goal of those on the left: that neo-colonialism and imperialism be ended forever.

We have a stark example on the energy front: other nations are drilling offshore (including in the coming years Cuba, barely 90 miles off our coast)-and we encourage and stoke this phenomena by importing their oil.

Yet Ted Kennedy and other elites refuse to allow windmills off the coast of their vacation homes.

Other nations open coal plants-China is on a coal plant buying binge (as Joe Biden noted), and will use the cheap energy they produce to manufacture goods for export to America. Forests are stripped to feed American desire for cheap pulp and wood products. Mining projects exploit workers in the lesser developed world to produce goods to make American lives better.

The list could go on.

We may have an environmental policy in our nation that liberals feel good about but this encourages neo-colonialism and imperialism.

Somebody pays a price for liberal vanity and policies. In these cases it is, to use a phrase beloved by liberals, the citizens of the world.