Reduce, reuse, revive America

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By Jeff Brammann, LeClaire | Wednesday, July 2, 2008 12:12 AM CDT | () comments

Some people say we need to drill in wildlife refuges and off coastal areas to reduce the price of gasoline.

The U.S. has 5 percent of the world’s population and we possess 2 percent of the world’s oil reserves, yet we use 25 percent of the world’s oil. If we drilled in every single spot that we possibly could and maximized our oil production, we could still never dream of producing as much oil as we consume. We cannot drill our way out of this problem.

Oil companies already have leases to drill for oil in the U.S. that they’re not using. They created this panic to fool the American people into letting them drill in wilderness areas and off coastal shores.

If we continue to consume energy at the rate we currently do, we will always be dependent on foreign oil. The long-term solution is to use much less energy. If our demand for gasoline was reduced by even one-third, the price of gas would drop accordingly.