Florida PIRG's Mark Ferrulo

As government officials and the media debate the lessons to be learned from the staggering human tragedy left in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Americans—and especially Floridians—also need to ask ourselves another question: how prepared are we to weather the coming energy crisis?

As gas prices jumped to over $3 per gallon following the storm, we learned just how much we depend on the Gulf Coast’s offshore drilling platforms and onshore refineries to supply our energy.

The disruption of these platforms and refineries left America, for the first time in decades, short of oil. The response by the oil industry and its allies in Washington and Tallahassee was predictable, yet disappointing.

Among the first post-Katrina headlines in Florida papers were “Florida Coast Drilling Gets Second Look” (Pensacola News Journal), “Katrina Renews Debate Over Drilling off Florida’s Coast” (Tallahassee Democrat), and “Gas Cost Reignites Drilling Debate” (Orlando Sentinel).

This rush to drill ignores a few hard realities. First, we could drill for every drop of oil underneath the ocean floor off our coast without making a dent in our dependence on foreign oil. U.S. consumption adds up to 25 percent of the world’s total, yet we have only 3 percent of the world’s reserves, only a fraction of which lies off our state’s shores. And demand, of course, is growing faster than ever.

Worse, while Saudi Arabia’s and Iraq’s oil reserves dwarf those of the U.S., they’re not going to last forever. In fact, estimates of when these reserves will begin to decline range from a few decades to a few years.

In other words, a much larger energy crisis is brewing and we have ample warning. The good news is that energy-efficient technologies and clean, renewable sources of energy are increasingly affordable and reliable. As pressure builds to lift the drilling restrictions that protect our waters, we’ll be there to point out the obvious. Banking our economic well being on a rapidly diminishing supply of oil is not only environmentally irresponsible, it’s dangerously short-sighted. The time to prepare for a new energy future is now.