James Ridgeway of the Village Voice muses about what tightening global oil supplies might eventually mean when you have two heavyweights, China and the U.S., after the same carbon-based economic elixir.

An excerpt:

A tightening oil supply puts the U.S. in a delicate situation vis-à-vis China, now the world's second-largest energy consumer, and increasingly our rival for untapped oil and gas—like in the Caspian Sea area, where we and Europe are trying to suck oil westward, while the Chinese build pipelines to carry it east.

The Chinese have opened oil development projects in South America, one of the areas we have been trying to exploit more fully in an effort to diversify away from the Middle East. They are also interested in developing the Canadian tar sands, an enormous but expensive source of petroleum.

Against these swings in energy trade, drilling for oil in Alaska is almost inconsequential, and at any rate, it presages what soon will become an all-out Bush push for plundering our public lands—there's gas along the eastern front of the Rockies, oil and gas still untapped in the Gulf of Mexico, and even some along both the East and West coasts. The details of Alaskan drilling must still be worked out either by both houses of Congress as they draw up their respective budget resolutions or in energy committees where precise arrangements are noted.

Environmentalists may want to preserve pristine land from spoilage and see alternative energy more speedily developed. But as last week's report from the Center for Responsive Politics makes clear, money calls the shots in Washington. And it comes from the oil companies that want to drill. Since 1989 the oil and gas industry has contributed $179.7 million to federal candidates and political parties, with three-quarters going to Republicans.

There's some other interesting detail in the piece about the money/politics/oil connection at work here, so by all means, click through!