Meanwhile, as the 4-month-old administration of President George W. Bush moves forward in proposing legislation and submitting judicial nominations, the American political scene is depressingly re-polarizing, with flacks of both parties reverting to the tedious clichés and strident overkill that repulsed the electorate in the two endless years cranking up to the 2000 election. If the American audience is tuning out political-chat TV shows (I certainly have), it's because they have become tediously, pompously predictable.

A good example is the current debate over Bush's decision to grant commercial leases for limited oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The question of America's energy supply is on the front burner after recent spikes in gasoline prices as well as the threat of rolling blackouts in California, evidently because of that state's failure to build additional power plants over the past decade. Partisan rancor only makes matters worse -- particularly when fiats and bromides issue from the lips of pampered Northeastern pundits who have clearly never thought for three seconds about the complex production and distribution system supplying gasoline and jet fuel for their vacation jaunts.

The history of modern energy is visible everywhere here in Pennsylvania, where torrential rivers and streams (now a third of their former strength because of diversion to municipal water supplies) once turned the mills that powered early factories. Stone coal was found in central Pennsylvania in 1791; anthracite was used for the first time to heat houses here in 1808. Eventually, 40 percent of the world's coal, more efficient than wood, came from the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton region -- whose economy faltered when coal use declined.

The modern petroleum industry was born in 1858 in Pennsylvania when a derrick was constructed at an oil spring near Grove City and drilling, modeled on salt-well operations, was begun. (Crude oil had always been skimmed from surface water by Indians and was even traded at Niagara.) The following year, oil was struck at a depth of 69 feet. The experimental use at that site (now called Titusville) of an iron pipe to stop the shaft from caving in would become a worldwide technique in oil drilling.

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Far larger American oil fields were later discovered in Oklahoma, California and Texas. Petroleum, composed of decayed microorganisms liquefied by geologic pressure, is the basis not simply of fuels like gasoline and kerosene but of road materials like asphalt and myriad petrochemicals used in drugs, synthetic fibers, dyes, household cleaners and lubricants. Much natural gas is a collateral product of oil drilling.

The southern tip of Philadelphia, once sacred Indian territory marking the union of the Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers, is a dizzying mass of turreted oil refineries and giant holding tanks, replicated in a mammoth site at the old 17th century pirate town of Marcus Hook near the state border. By day and night, these futuristic complexes spout steam and blaze with spires of electric lights and infernally flaming exhaust pipes. Huge oil tankers sitting low in the water and flying cagily mysterious national flags make their way up river past Philadelphia International Airport from Delaware Bay, the Atlantic Ocean, and beyond.

This elaborate international system, vulnerable to mishap or political instability, has given us the plentiful, relatively cheap gasoline that has fostered Americans' love affair with cars. But a heavy price has been paid in pollution, introducing contaminants into the air and water supply whose long-term health effects are still unknown. The environmental movement has thus far failed to significantly reduce our over-reliance on petroleum, partly because too many post-'60s environmentalists openly espouse a socialist hostility to capitalism -- an economic system that is in fact the foundation of modern democracy and the engine of social mobility, empowering women and racial and ethnic minorities alike. Surely the Green Party (for which I voted in 2000) must rethink its fundamental premises.

"Big oil" is demonized by the Northeastern media partly for cultural reasons. The dramatic development of the rich East Texas oil field in the 1930s fused the persona of the frontier macho man with that of the ruthless oil tycoon -- an image spread round the world through bestselling novels, epic movies like "Giant" (1956), and hit TV shows like "Dallas" (1978-91). Now with veterans of the Texas oil industry serving the nation as both president and vice president (and with the latter having made millions of dollars as a businessman in a brief period), the political debate is being strangled by preconceptions -- some of them psychosexual. For cloistered scribes and armchair leftists, the oilman who drills is nature's rapist.

Thirty years ago, even before the disruptive oil embargo of 1973, this country should have launched a systematic search for alternative energy technologies and created a master plan for public transportation that would make Americans less dependent on the automobile. That the production of wind and solar energy remains cumbersome or that the safety of nuclear power plants is still questionable is a testament to national lethargy. The Bush administration has needlessly compromised its own reputation by reducing funding for alternative-energy development at the same time as it approved drilling in the Arctic Refuge. Are there no politicians with the long view? Business prosperity and environmentalist ethics are both critical for the U.S. and need not be mutually exclusive.

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