Wouldn’t it make a great birthday present to the country if we could get serious about Energy Independence?

Yale Environment 360: As Energy Prices Rise, the Pressure to Drill Builds
Perhaps we should be amazed that America’s largest protected area — the 19.2 million-acre Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) — has remained inviolate this long. Politicians from U.S. energy-producing states and the fossil fuel lobby have been trying to open the area for drilling since the United States Geological Survey first posited significant reserves there in the 1980s. Despite continuous pressure, however, ANWR has remained off limits, mostly because enough members of Congress have accepted the argument that the caribou, musk ox, polar bear, and other fauna and flora of the fragile coastal plain would be threatened by development.

Now, with oil at $140 a barrel and gas more than $4.00 a gallon, talking heads once again fill the U.S. airwaves with sneers about the absurdity of keeping ANWR off-limits because of bleeding-heart environmentalists who put caribou over people. Recently, President Bush ratcheted up the political pressure, demanding that Democrats agree not only to open ANWR, but also to end a 26-year congressional ban on drilling for oil and gas off the east and west coasts of the United States. The president asked that the drilling bans on the outer continental shelf and in ANWR be lifted before Congress adjourns for summer recess — an unlikely scenario, but one that illustrates how politically sensitive the issue of high energy prices has become.

Seems to me that the energy lobbies using of the high gas prices is an indication of their fear of the turning of the tide comming in this election…