Fact: We, that is, us humans, of all stripes, need oil. Period, full stop, end of discussion.
We use something like 20 million barrels a day. There are NO, let me repeat that, NO, so-called "alternative" fuels that can possibly hope to make a dent in that number.
Solar? Wind? Nuclear? Those are sources of electricity- we burn almost no oil whatsoever for electrical generation. Massive increases in those will equal essentially zero reduction in oil consumption.
Biofuels? Horsepucky. We can't grow enough soy or corn to offset more than perhaps ten percent of our oil consumption- tops- and that presumes we scale back food crops by massive amounts. And note what the increased demand for ethanol-corn has done to the price of corn already- and we'd have to increase the amount of corn going to fuels by three orders of magnitude to start making a noticible dent in oil consumption.
Conservation is equally all but impossible. A huge amount of oil goes into things besides motor fuels, such as plastics (and what isn't plastic these days?) and asphalts for roads. We'd make a bigger dent in consumption by not throwing away three billion bottled-water bottles every year, than trying to grow a billion more bushels of corn...
Therefore, we need oil. We may not be able to sustain this consumption for much longer, but the current alternatives are utterly unworkable, leaving the choice of using oil, or letting the entire world's economy collapse.
We currently import just under 55% of the oil we use, primarily from Canada, but also significant amounts from places that don't like us, such as Saudi Arabia and Iran.
The North Slope is a domestic source- the money used to develop, extract and refine that source would stay largely within the US, as opposed to going outside, or even to unfriendly nations.
It is not a question of if ANWR will be tapped, it's only a question of when. And since it takes time to bring a new field on line (anywhere from two years up) I am of the opinion that sooner is better than later.
