you know...

(An aside: I've been quite political this week, haven't I?)

One of the things that ticks me off re: energy policy is the people who, when presented with the idea of offshore drilling or opening ANWR or going to the oil shale or tar sands

(Which, another aside: I wrote a science report on the oil shale when I was in 5th grade. That was like 1980, folks. They knew back then it could have been a viable source of oil).

Anyway, these people - if they don't pooh-pooh it outright because it Hurts Teh Environment, they will say something like,

"Yeah, but it will take like 10 years to develop that, and people are hurting now."

And this is a total headdesk moment for me.

That is not at all unlike my saying, when I walked in the door of the biology building at My Graduate School for the first time, "Well, it might take me as long as 10 years to complete this Ph.D. thing. And during that time I'm going to be making scut wages as a TA and living in a back bedroom of my parents' house. So I might as well not even try and just go wait tables for a living, because I want money now."

It's almost - it's almost as if the inability to delay gratification in other areas of their lives has infected their political and policy thinking.

And the other thing is: well, dammit, if they had tried tapping the offshore oil reserves 10 years ago, it would be better now, no? So why not invest in that with the hope that in 10 years, we won't all be paying $15 a gallon for gas or something? I mean, of course it's bad now. Of course gas is more expensive than I'd like it to be. Of course anything we do short of finding a magical unicorn that will allow us to turn crap into oil will take time. And there aren't any magical unicorns out there that I've seen.

So my opinion is, stop whining and DO something. (But then, that's my general response to a lot of crap in politics, policy, and protests: if you're sitting on your ass complaining, you're not doing anything productive. Get off your ass and do something. You might not feel so much like complaining when you're done.)