Bring Back Boomtown!

Having just taught my two courses for the day, I went up to my office, turned on the computer, pulled up the Drudge Report and saw that President Bush is going to lift the executive ban on offshore drilling. From the article:

There are two prohibitions on offshore drilling, one imposed by Congress and another by executive order signed by former President Bush in 1990. The current president, trying to ease market tensions and boost supply, called last month for Congress to lift its prohibition before he did so himself.

But Perino said Bush no longer wants to wait. She pinned blame on the leaders of the Democratic Congress, noting that no action has been taken on this issue.

"They haven't even held a single hearing," Perino said. "So we are going to move forward, and hopefully that will spur action by the Congress."

It would be nice if the do-nothing leaders of the Democratic Congress would quit worrying about doing right by the Gaia-worshippers and instead do right by the American people who are suffering under rising gas prices. Inevitably, the aforementioned moonbats will respond by saying we can't drill our way out of this crisis and that we need to protect the environment of our coastal areas. And indeed, the government has been acting along those lines for some time:

Congressional Democrats, joined by some GOP lawmakers from coastal states, have opposed lifting the prohibition that has barred energy companies from waters along both the East and West coasts and in the eastern Gulf of Mexico. A succession of presidents, from Bush's father—George H.W. Bush—to Bill Clinton, have sided against drilling in these waters, as has Congress each year for 27 years [emphasis mine]. Their goal has to been to protect beaches and coastal states' tourism economies.

That's right, such restrictive policies have been in place since 1981, which not coincidentally is when the last American oil boom went bust - not because of a lack of oil, but because environmentalists persuaded the government that protecting "the environment" was more important than achieving energy independence and affordable gasoline.

Well, anyone who was in Texas or Oklahoma during the early '80s will remember that the oil boom was a wonderful time of great prosperity, perhaps best exemplified in popular culture by the film Urban Cowboy. I say it's time we have another oil boom and bring back the Urban Cowboy Era, for not only could we have affordable gas and tell the Saudis to go stuff it, but we could once again enjoy great music like this: