Three reader responses to Chris Horner’s “The Great Race.”

I think you have captured the essence of the American economic spirit with “Let’s go after both (ANWR and alternative energy), and see which gets here first.”
We need politicians who can make the public understand that God smiles on those who take responsibility for providing for themselves, their families, and the future generations. And this means basing decisions on real science and economics — not passionate opinions.
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A similar plan was used on the Manhattan project. They wanted to build a bomb. There were many possible ways that might work. They didn’t know which ways were better, which might be dead ends. So they tried ALL of them.
They got lucky. Not only did multiple paths work, some of the procedures on one path were helpful on other paths. (Details in Rhodes’ book, The Making of the Atomic Bomb.)
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The thing that I would like to point out is that the oil would have been here now if drilling in ANWR had been approved seven years ago. If I remember correctly, that was in Bush’s first year and many of the Senators that voted against are still against it. For the life of me, I can not understand why the the Republicans are not making hay with this. If McCain had any sense at all he would change his position on this and make it one of the centerpieces of his campaign.