THAT’S DEBATABLE:

GOP presidential hopeful John McCain recently said he supports offshore oil drilling to try to lower the rising price of gas. For many years, most Californians have generally opposed offshore drilling because of the 1969 oil spill in Santa Barbara, so it was surprising that the Arizona senator announced his support there. Where do you stand on the issue of offshore drilling and why?

For national security and economic reasons, it’s better to produce our own oil domestically than to send our money overseas where it often ends up in the hands of desert despots.

We should not be groveling before OPEC, as President Bush has, but instead focus on energy independence as well as pursuing the use of renewable energy sources like hydroelectric dams, and wind, solar and nuclear power.

Off-shore drilling has been environmentally safer than depending on oil tankers considering the major spills over the last 30 years have come from tankers and not oil platforms.

Therefore, we should have been supporting off-shore drilling all along.

Dana Rohrabacher

(R-Huntington Beach)

The notion of drilling off our coast may win a few votes, but it is equivalent to the farmer eating his seed stock.

The paltry amount of oil in California’s coastal waters is more valuable as a strategic oil reserve for our grandchildren than the next fix for our oil addiction.

It is guesstimated that these waters contain 4 billion to 6 billion barrels of recoverable oil. Compare that to the 7 billion barrels our nation consumes every year or the 260 billion barrels that Saudi Arabia claims to have in reserves.

To those who say we need to exploit our natural resources, we are. Trillions of dollars have been invested in attracting tourists to the beauty of our coast.

Debbie Cook