Like every other driver on the roads, I cringe when the gas light comes on – gas is four dollars per gallon and shows no signs of dropping significantly, and I am a poor college student.

So what brilliant plan do our leaders come up with? The government is considering lifting a moratorium on offshore oil drilling in an effort to lower gas prices for all consumers. Regardless of what your political ideology or economic beliefs are, this plan is a monumentally stupid distraction from real energy solutions.

For one, the effect this measure will have in 2008 is about the same as urinating in the ocean to raise the water level. It takes time to find oil and build offshore facilities to remove it from the ground. By the time we actually manage to do that, the price of crude oil and the price of gas will reach a level of censurable obscenity – I’m talking about double-digit dollar values.

Offshore drilling also ignores something any college student can learn by taking an introductory economics class – supply and demand. Oil is something with an inelastic supply, which means that the supply is set at around 83 million barrels per day and isn’t going to increase dramatically without several miracles. So for the offshore oil to do us any good, it would have to teleport itself into the giant storage tanks under our gas stations and simultaneously convert itself into a form our cars can use.

If that plan ever worked, then I’d be teleporting vast sums of money into my bank accounts and simultaneously convert it into a ticket to grad school. As it stands, a rough, conservative estimate of the impact of offshore drilling would lead to the price of gas falling about eight cents.

Wow. I can feel the money I saved on gas now burning a hole in my pocket.

But the beach is where offshore drilling might have the greatest effect, especially in a state like North Carolina. I can prove this mathematically.

Offshore oil rigs plus hurricanes equals a disaster waiting to happen.

I’m not even going to explain the environmental aspects of this. We know what oil spills can do to a coastal ecosystem – anyone remember the Exxon Valdez or Hurricane Katrina? I’d arrange for a picture of a dying otter or sea-faring bird, covered in oil, to be placed here, but that’s a bit much.

But just think about how that would make our beach experiences. Instead of a winter stroll along the beach, I’d be leaping around the beach to avoid stepping in oil. There would be no more picture-perfect beaches in those spring break commercials without using old pictures or Photoshop. And it’d kill the value of any beach house or boat – after all, who wants to live next to the tar pits or take an ocean cruise through sludge?

From a purely economic perspective, offshore drilling is a stupid idea – only burning your money or falling for one of those scam e-mails is more stupid. Because the bottom line is that anyone who tells you that offshore drilling will bring back ridiculously cheap gas is full of it.

E-mail your oil woes to [email protected].