Opinion: Oil is too valuable to drill

NEW ORLEANS — There’s a voice missing from the debate over whether to open up the nation’s offshore oil to drilling. That would be the voice of unborn Americans – not our children or even their children, but children generations from now – assuming the republic lasts that long.

Drilling will be an environmental disaster, foes warn – something we know a thing or two about here in Louisiana. And even when it comes on line it won’t make a whit of difference in the price at the pump. Maybe so, the pro-drilling crowd replies, but there’s an important psychology in pushing jack-up rigs into waters off Florida and California and maybe even New England. It will spook speculators into a sell-off.

All true, perhaps – and utterly irrelevant. The real reason to retain the ban is not that drilling is too messy or that the oil won’t be valuable enough to make a difference at the gas pump. It’s that it’s entirely too valuable. Too valuable to squander on an economy as wasteful as ours.

[…] The reason not to drill for oil is this: Our descendants will desperately need it later on. Even in the near term it’s a resource of inestimable value. It’s not something that should be plundered to keep all-American SUVs running, no matter how fervent our patriotism. It’s a resource that needs to be husbanded and preserved, to keep America running in decades to come.

Boston Globe