Vince Carroll: Gas Prices Push Mark Udall to Reverse Position on Drilling

We here already have asked the question about Mark Udall's whiplash-inducing U-turn on domestic offshore drilling and energy policy. Rocky Mountain News editor Vince Carroll follows on the same theme, though with greater eloquence:

Two years ago, when a Rocky editorial called Udall shortsighted for voting against a bill to ease the ban on offshore drilling for natural gas (oil wasn't even on the table in order to eliminate fearmongering about spills), Udall wrote to say that we had "oversimplified the question."

Drilling "may be justified with the right safeguards," he maintained, but "that has not been properly established."

One would have thought that the vast experience of extracting natural gas in the western Gulf of Mexico had established that safeguards could be successfully imposed elsewhere, but the congressman was very picky at the time.

More to the point, perhaps, gasoline wasn't $4 a gallon.

The shifting winds of politics can do curious and strange things indeed, and none more curious nor stranger this year than Mark Udall finding the inspiration to support domestic oil exploration as Colorado voters have grown angry about high gas prices.