With gas prices continuing to rise to record highs, controversy is brewing in Washington about what the government should be doing to get those prices at the pump back down. George W. Bush and his team have advocated lifting the ban on offshore drilling to try and find untapped sources of oil under the ocean. Looking to score political points among frustrated Americans in the upcoming election, John McCain has adopted Bush's offshore drilling plan, with promises that it will drive the price of oil down. Barack Obama and most democrats have fought the plan, saying it can have potentially grave effects on the already ailing environment. Environmentalists have pointed to large oil spills in the ocean caused by offshore drilling, like the disastrous 1969 Santa Barbara spill. So what's really going on here? The truth is that even if offshore drilling is done safely and without harm to the environment, which is more likely with today's modern equipment, offshore drilling will probably not have much effect on oil prices... now or decades from now. The Department of Energy said that offshore drilling would probably not have any significant effect on oil production for over 20 years, and there are questions about just how much oil we could actually extract if we began offshore drilling. For example, it is estimated that there are 17 billion barrels of oil untapped in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge... enough to satisfy American consumption of oil for just two years. This sounds like a lot, but the oil would be traded internationally, meaning it would last much less than two years... and if it takes decades to access all of it, that will just amount to a drop in the bucket towards solving the energy crisis, and not a real solution. As always, the best thing we can do to stop skyrocketing gas prices is to find alternate fuel sources for our cars, electricity consumption, and everything else we use oil for.