As some of you might know, I think a lot of about the environment. I do not know if I would call myself an environmentalist. I eat my steak rare. I love trees and know that the most beautiful forests are ones where some of the trees are harvested. I do, however, love good food, clean air and good soil. I think that soiling one place to make another place beautiful is a sort of blasphemy. Thus, my views on environmental are more formed by Berry and Tolkien rather than Gore. I am not sure about global warming. I sort of take the Michael Creighton view in his interesting novel State of Fear—let some model prove itself right for twenty years before (most can’t forecast future temperatures very well, but the clamor is there for infinite tax dollars based on guesses.)

I was reading the latest issue of National Review and there is an interesting story called “Fossil Future” by Jonah Goldberg. He argues fairly persuasively that drilling for oil has got to be part of any national energy policy. It seems to that national security and solvency might well be at stake. Listen, no one would like to see the world run on wind and wave power more than me. I would like to be done with cars. I would like to cut back and use less energy and live a more simply life. I would like to build communities where walking and biking are the norm, but for now we should not (in yet another area of our world) pretend that we can live in a world without oil. Also, we should not pretend that other countries are stopping drilling or cleaning up after themselves or that the world is full of people with our survival in mind.