Drill, baby, drill!

Tom Friedman on Meet the Press a couple of weeks ago:

When I hear, drill, drill, drill, or drill, baby, drill, I try to imagine [...] what would happen if the Saudi, Venezuelan, Russian and Nigeria observers were up in a sky box in that Xcel Center listening to the crowd chant, “drill, drill, drill”? What would they be doing? They’d be up there leading the chant. They’d be saying this is great. America isn’t sitting there saying, “Invent, invent, invent new, renewable energy,” they’re saying, “drill, drill, drill.” And you know, for me, yes, we do need to exploit our domestic resource. I’m actually not against drilling. What I’m against is making that the center of our focus.

I’m in complete agreement. I’m not against drilling because it’s bad, I’m just against it as being the most visible part of energy policy. It’ll do almost nothing and will set us behind even more. We consume about a quarter of the world’s oil supply, and 3-4% of available oil is in the U.S.

I also liked this quote in the same interview:

I was just in China a week or 10 days ago, Tom, and you know, young Chinese, you know, whenever I got here, they say to me, you know, “Mr. Friedman, you guys got to grow dirty for 150 years, now it’s our turn.” To which I always say to them, “You know what, you’re right. It is your turn. Take your time. Grow as dirty as you want. Because I think we just need five years to invent all the clean power technologies you’re going to need before you choke to death and then we’re going to come over and we’re going to sell them to you and we’re going to clean your clock in the next great global industry.” That’s when I see the headsets of the translators adjusting, “What is he saying?”

(full transcript)