Bush has been pushing for offshore drilling the whole time he’s been in office, but what else can you expect? He's an oilman. He's just using the power of his office to make his friends even more disgustingly wealthy. Now John McCain wants to help Bush's buddies get rich too! That's right, he's pandering to the lowest common denominator in American politics and calling for opening up all of America's coastlines to oil drilling.

Lots of others are jumping on the bandwagon, as well – including Florida governor (and potential McCain running mate) Charlie Crist and Newt Gingrich, who has started a petition in support of the proposal that claims to have 750,000 signatures.

All of these politicians are trying to exploit the insecurity people feel due to $4+ gas prices to score political points and make their friends in the oil business even richer. And yet opening up our nation’s coastline to drilling is an absolutely ludicrous proposal.

Not only will it pollute the shoreline and harm marine life, but it won’t really do a thing to lower today’s hyper-inflated energy costs – the gas from those oilfields wouldn’t even be on the market until 2017 at the earliest. And there’s not enough oil reserves off our coasts to even make a significant impact on our energy security in the long run. It’s estimated that only about 3% of the world’s oil reserves lie on or off the coast of America – yet we consume 24% of the world’s oil.

The only real, long-term solution to our energy problems is to move toward renewable energy sources like wind, solar, geothermal, tidal, etc.

Thankfully, the coastal states that will be most affected are not staying quiet about this proposal. For instance, Florida Today has a really excellent piece up about how “utterly reckless” it would be to open Florida’s coastline to drilling. It’s well worth the read.

And Greenpeace has launched its own online action to counteract the call for offshore drilling. Hit it up and help us tell McCain that this is not the proposal he should be running on.