James Taranto ought to file this one under “News You Can Use.”

The Orange County Register ran an editorial yesterday entitled “You Can’t Ride a Polar Bear to Work.” Some details:

Republican presidential candidate John McCain this week reversed his position and drew environmentalists’ wrath when he came out in favor of lifting the federal ban on offshore oil drilling. Mr. McCain apparently realizes he needs motorists’ votes more than environmentalists’ endorsements. Better late than never. Rising gasoline prices have focused voters’ attention. A poll last October in the San Francisco Bay Area found 69 percent willing to pay an additional 10-cent gasoline tax to “fight global warming.” This week only 37 percent liked the idea. . . . Almost 80 percent of those surveyed for the Washington Post-ABC poll said high gasoline prices now pose a financial hardship, establishing that issue for the first time in recent memory as a top concern among voters. . . . In May, Gallup showed 57 percent of Americans favored “allowing drilling in U.S. coastal and wilderness areas now off-limits,” while only 20 percent blamed increasing gasoline prices on Big Oil. . . . We hope that even if it’s only a crass appeal for votes, Mr. McCain rethinks his opposition to drilling in ANWR and also pledges to overcome Democrat opposition to leasing interior federal lands that may contain 1.8 trillion barrels of oil in solid shale rock, which a RAND Corp. study estimates could be enough to meet U.S. energy needs for centuries. The U.S. realistically can’t become energy independent, but it can become energy self-sufficient by drilling closer to home, reviving shunned technologies such as nuclear power and by encouraging private companies to seek new technologies and approaches in support of that goal.