Do you remember when the environment was a going concern?

Ah, halcyon days. When we cared about the environment. When we were concerned about Global Warming. When we didn't want another Hurricane Katrina, and we cared about New Orleans.

Now it would seem that the majority of Americans are in favor of off-shore oil drilling. We are in favor of it, evidently, so that we can fix the energy crisis by becoming energy independent. These are the buzz words these days.

Evidently, it is a good thing to be energy independent- to not rely on other countries for energy. This way, we will become more isolated from the rest of the world. We can become more elitist, more parochial, more isolationist. This will likely help the rest of the world like us more. It will also keep more of our money in our hands, and continue the unfavorable trade imbalance begun in the early 1800s, where the wealthiest countries take from the poorest countries of the world. For Venezuela and Yemen should be put to shame for hoping that their oil reserves might help the general populace.

We need to drill because we need oil. We need the psychological support of pretending that oil reserves are going to last forever. We need to be able to pretend that the reserves that are present on America's coasts are more than a drop in the bucket. We need to be able to pretend that that oil is a renewable resource. (Of course, it is. Just over the course of 100s of millions of years, when a lot more animals and plants die and decompose and become oil. And our current environmental policy is actually well structured to increase oil supplies dramatically in 300 million years, at the rate that we are killing off other species.)

We need a way out of this mess. We need to pretend that new oil drilling will produce a drop in prices now, or at least ten years from now. We need to pretend that that future drop in prices will be more than a few cents, more than offset by the increase in inflation. We need to pretend that oil companies aren't using all of their allotted prospecting areas, and need another bailout from the federal government.

But the greatest make-believe that we require is that there is no environmental crisis. That there is no Global Warming. That Katrina never happened. All we have to do is say it three times and click our hands, and the world is black and liquid again, without giant killer storms, intense heat and permanent dust bowls, rising sea levels and countries disappearing, and 100s of millions of people made refugees.

In all the talk about how Americans want oil drilling, no one- not the press, not McCain, not Obama- is talking about how dangerous it is to continue oil drilling at all. Yes, we need oil to run cars and make plastics. But our goal should be the removal of any need for it at all. Practically, we will be forced into this in about twenty years, as oil reserves dwindle completely. Environmentally, we can't wait that long, because Global Warming's tipping point is now. This isn't some left-wing-environmental-freak thing. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.) It's the issue that people are dying, and will die, in dramatic, horrifying numbers, if we do not stop Global Warming now.

That's incorrect. They will die, in horrifying numbers, no matter what we do. We have a choice, however, of stopping a logarithmic escalation of those numbers. Good on you, Obama, for rejecting the failed policies of oil drilling, and offering a $7,000 rebate to new hybrid purchasers. But let us remind the voters, America, and the world that this is this is a matter of stopping the failed policies of the last 100 years, destroying our home. This is a matter of life and death, without hyperbole.