Oil is too valuable to drill

NEW ORLEANS
THERE'S A voice missing from the debate over whether to open up the nation's offshore oil to drilling. That would be the voice of unborn Americans - not our children or even their children, but children generations from now - assuming the republic lasts that long.

Drilling will be an environmental disaster, foes warn - something we know a thing or two about here in Louisiana. And even when it comes on line it won't make a whit of difference in the price at the pump. Maybe so, the pro-drilling crowd replies, but there's an important psychology in pushing jack-up rigs into waters off Florida and California and maybe even New England. It will spook speculators into a sell-off.

All true, perhaps - and utterly irrelevant. The real reason to retain the ban is not that drilling is too messy or that the oil won't be valuable enough to make a difference at the gas pump. It's that it's entirely too valuable. Too valuable to squander on an economy as wasteful as ours.

Louisiana and our neighbors along the Gulf (except Florida) have been drilling offshore for decades. We did it when oil was worth a few bucks a barrel. And we did it when OPEC pushed the price into the stratosphere ($30 a barrel!) and we kept on doing it when the price fell back toward $10 a barrel in the early '90s. We've ravaged our shoreline - less through spills than by dredging canals through coastal marshes. There's plenty more oil to go, but here's another fact: If we hadn't let so much of it play out, we'd be sitting pretty as Saudi sheiks just now.

A brief digression: Refusing to balance federal spending with taxes has led to a looming debt disaster. That debt will fall crushingly on future generations. For us to add to our legacy a decision to drain the limited amount of oil left on the continental shelf would only add insult to the horrendous economic burden we have selfishly decided to lay off on our kids. Oil is the legacy of geological eons. We have the power to suck it dry in decades. Does that mean we should?

The reason not to drill for oil is this: Our descendants will desperately need it later on. Even in the near term it's a resource of inestimable value. It's not something that should be plundered to keep all-American SUVs running, no matter how fervent our patriotism. It's a resource that needs to be husbanded and preserved, to keep America running in decades to come.

Right now we can only envy the likes of Russia - as rich in oil as Louisiana once was. The gross economic inefficiencies of the Soviet era partly account for the huge advantage Russia now enjoys as the world's second biggest producer after Saudi Arabia. Russia is only catching up in the wasteful exploitation of its oil fields. For decades they were preserved by economic inertia - kind of like the French Quarter in New Orleans, before preservationists got wise to its worth. Now Russia has Europe over a barrel, quite literally, and by extension the United States. For evidence of our powerless, look no further than the impotent finger-wagging from the White House as Russia recently marched into the Republic of Georgia, massacred whole villages and thumbed its nose at the world.

The offshore reserves that John McCain would begin tapping tomorrow - and Obama more reluctantly the day after - are too valuable for that. We have wasted too much already. We need to save them for a time when the need will be only more urgent and their value correspondingly higher. Right now - but perhaps not for long - we have options: wind and sun, hopefully cleaner coal, and, for maximum near-term impact, far greater efficiency in what we do with them. For all the debt piled up in the past eight years, we also still have the financial resources to make the transition.

We don't deserve to tap offshore reserves when doing so means squandering it in cars that get 20 miles to the gallon or in generators operating at 50 percent of the efficiency levels current technology allow for.

We have stolen so much from our descendants. What's left of our oil shouldn't be added to the list.

Jed Horne is author of "Breach of Faith."