Drilling works, to a certain degree, but it is not the only thing that is needed because as other parts of the world catch up in living standard, they too will use more oil and will buy from our suppliers (Middle East, Africa, Russia, Latin America, etc) and increase our prices. Unless you use forces to keep other nations like China, India, Mexico, Brazil, etc in poverty forever (which is not market economy that you guys support), price will increase because everyone loves to live like the US.
Conservation policy is not just an economical issue. Even if it is not as cost effective as market only policy, it is an insurance hedge to lower your volatility in case you get into supply problems, like our friendly Saudi Arabia get into a revolution and turn into another Iran, Russia started to cut off supply to Europe and force them to compete with us for more oil, Brazil and Mexico went into a hostile dictators' hand and decide to only use the oil themselves and build up their own economy, dictators in Africa decide to pledge loyalty to China and Russia instead of US (already happened), etc.
Look at what the tiny supplier called Iran caused in our market price, and multiply that by the volume of other oil producing nations, and see what will happen if we put all our eggs in one basket (drilling).
Fortunately, people will not die when oil run low one day. The infrastructure and civilization will catch up, people will live closer together in cities, build and buy local instead of shipping stuff off from China, McMansion with 3 hour per day commute in SUV will be history. US may lose its economic power status to others unless people change the way they live and work, but most of us will survive fine, unless you have a huge mortgage on your McMansion 2 hours away from work and the property price tanked when everyone move back to the cities.
Conservation policy is not just an economical issue. Even if it is not as cost effective as market only policy, it is an insurance hedge to lower your volatility in case you get into supply problems, like our friendly Saudi Arabia get into a revolution and turn into another Iran, Russia started to cut off supply to Europe and force them to compete with us for more oil, Brazil and Mexico went into a hostile dictators' hand and decide to only use the oil themselves and build up their own economy, dictators in Africa decide to pledge loyalty to China and Russia instead of US (already happened), etc.
Look at what the tiny supplier called Iran caused in our market price, and multiply that by the volume of other oil producing nations, and see what will happen if we put all our eggs in one basket (drilling).
Fortunately, people will not die when oil run low one day. The infrastructure and civilization will catch up, people will live closer together in cities, build and buy local instead of shipping stuff off from China, McMansion with 3 hour per day commute in SUV will be history. US may lose its economic power status to others unless people change the way they live and work, but most of us will survive fine, unless you have a huge mortgage on your McMansion 2 hours away from work and the property price tanked when everyone move back to the cities.
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