I'm personally for drilling in ANWAR only because that place is already a forsaken swamp not some pristine yellowstone postcard.
I grew up in Ann Arbor founder of earth day, a couple of tree planting foundations and many other "Green" things. While I wouldn't call myself a green or hippy by any stretch its hard to live in such a place without some of it rubbing off, one of the things I miss now living in rural PA is no recycling.
anyways the real issue here in the long term is sustainability, I.e we can apply a bandaid today and we probably should, drilling is absolutely fine in my book. But what about in 30-40 years, we haven't hit the mythological peak oil yet, the problem is we're running out of cheap oil and with the huge rising economies of india and china, more people in the world want it. really the problem is the lack of viable alternative with none in sight.
read the book 1000 barrels a second, written by a energy analyst/economist who worked for oil companies. Gives a really good understanding into the economics of energy distribution and the major problem that we are already experiencing. There is no soft landing. What ever happens we are in for some rocky times in our lifetimes as the energy sector and consumer adjusts to changing energy availability.
http://www.amazon.com/Thousand-Barrels-Second-Challenges-Dependent/dp/0071492607/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1218174746&sr=8-1on a personal note, I'm in the process of building a steam turbine. It's a fun welding project and the ultimate goal is to build a solar collector and make enough steam to power my own house, which can be done for surprisngly cheap especially if you have fabrication knoweldge and equipment.