Offshore drilling is the right thing to do for the United States.

Thanks for responding. I'll start out with rebuttal. Refutation 1. "First off, oil is not an infinite source of energy..." It may not be infinite, true, but it is an extremely useful source of energy. Let's examine renewable sources such as solar power, wind power, and geothermal energy. Solar power can only absorb so much sunlight and would be useless on a cloudy day. Finding windy fields is very difficult and costs a lot of money, and what if the wind stops in that certain place altogether? And geothermal energy. The main problem with geothermal, of course, is lack of easily accessible surface sites. Turbines on Old Faithful would probably not be well received. Oil is much more efficient than these types of energies. I agree that renewable energy is important and that we should invest in it, but even the President said that to transition to clean sources, we need to drill oil. And my opponent said that the offshore drilling idea was merely a political move to gain Republican support. But the President can't say "drill" for no reason, and he gave a clear, true response to why we need drilling. 2. My opponent has shown lists of oil spills in the United States and various countries. I'd like to point out that if you read about the spills, it is not due to problems with the tanker. It is because of other issues such as collisions. If you read the recent Texas oil spill that my opponent has cited in his source, a barge RAMMED into the tanker, causing the oil spill. The fault was not in the tanker, as shown. Onto the Australian spill. This occurred because a law was disobeyed. "The Chinese-registered Shen Neng 1 rammed into Douglas Shoals late Saturday, an area that has shipping restrictions" The accident was caused by the carelessness of the crew, not problems with the tanker. http://dailycaller.com... 3. If this oil plan was "taking harsh criticism from, well, everyone," then this debate would not have existed, now would it? I did not ever say that we can only get oil from places off limits. Obama recently opened up new places to drill and those places contain significant amounts of oil. If we did drill in those restricted areas, huge benefits could come just like the oil found near Brazil. How can offshore drilling not help the economy? It creates many jobs, it reduces our deficit spent on foreign oil, and profit will come from the oil. Canada was once against offshore drilling, but now they do it, and they don't regret it one bit. I know that offshore drilling takes time. But think of all the benefit. Good things take time to come. Jobs, money, oil, oh my! :P That's practically a lot of benefit from so little time. 4. My opponent has stated that we can put an oi rig anywhere within a 125 mile distance, which completely contradicts his first version of his contention. He stated that the average man could see 7 miles out to shore and he currently just contradicted himself. Also, he has stated that an oil spill can kill marine life and such. However, fewer oil spills happen nowadays. At this moment, they only occur because of clumsiness of the crew or some other obstruction. If we instructed the crew more and made sure that no one would get in the way of the oil rig, then no more spills would happen. He also talked about the Exxon Valdez spill and how it spilled 11 million gallons of oil. That was certainly horrible. NEARLY 30 YEARS AGO. With improving technology, oil rigs are safer, and I have shown examples in Round 2, as you asked. No oil rig has carries that much oil, and there will be fewer accidents because of technology. And I also would like to ask why my opponent put in something about medical waste when medical waste has nothing to do with offshore drilling. 5. My opponent has said that the hate from terrorists comes from stealing the foreign oil in the Middle East. Well, if that's true, then why don't we drill inside our own free borders to get oil, instead of wasting money fighting wars for something that we have inside our own country? Instead of seizing something from a far-off place, why don't we just look at what's right under our noses? It will eliminate the problems that I stated in Round 2. My opponent has stated that oil still costs money even if we get it from our own country. There are many more benefits drilling here then buying it from others. As I stated before, the Middle East HATES us. They DESPISE us. They sell us oil because they benefit greatly from it. Think of this. What if we sold our oil to other people? We could make the 750 billion dollars we're giving to others! "Sounds like we should stop playing the 'world police' and leave everyone alone." What?? If it wasn't for some people and countries in the world, America wouldn't exist. If we left everyone alone, there would be no trade. China wouldn't have give us the money that we relied on so heavily. My opponent's statement was completely ludicrous! And as I have previously shown, even renewables have their problems. 6. I don't see how gas prices will go up. Inflation occurs because something of popular demand begins to run out. Gas companies would go broke if they charged a lot for something they had a lot of, and their business would be taken away by a company that charged cheap for the surplus of oil. Thanks to my opponent. This has been a great debate and I look forward to the 4th and final round. Good luck!