To drill or not to drill

The debate over increasing oil drilling in the United States is centered on lowering prices. I'm for that - if politicians and oil companies can commit to that as a short-term solution.

My fear is that we go from "crisis mode" - where everyone is saying we need real study of non-oil based energy systems - to a feeling that everything is OK and maybe we'll find more oil to last us for decades (or until the next energy crunch hits).

With apologies to William Shakespeare, I offer this ode to the problem:

To drill or not to drill; that is the question
Whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outraged environmentalists
Or to take the hit against a tide of rising energy prices
And by accepting it; pay it. To drill, so deep.
So deep, perchance to strike. Ay, there's the rub.
For in that wealth of new oil what troubles may come
When we have shuffled off the energy crisis
Must give us pause. There's the dilemma
That makes a calamity of a fossil fuel life.
For who will bear the whips and scorns of Greens,
The oil giant's wrongs, the common man's consumption,
The pangs of price hikes, the market's delay,
The insolence of politicians and the spurns
That drilling makes, when he himself might his mark make
With a clean hybrid?
But that the dread of something after oil,
The undiscover'd country from whose ideas
We seek results, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those fuels we have
Than fly to solutions that we have not yet thought of?
Thus convenience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of clean fuels
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thoughtlessness,
And futures of great clean environment
With this regard their momentum turn awry,
And lose in the name of Exxon