NJ: The debate about offshore drilling this summer seemed to revolve around the question of whether drilling could lower oil prices in the near term, but there wasn't much talk about the environmental impact of this exploration. If you were advising President-elect Obama, how would you advise him to frame offshore drilling?

Savitz: Well, I think it's hard to go back into the past because a lot's really changed since three months, four months ago, including the price of oil. At that time oil was very high, there was an election going on -- everybody was calculating their every move based on the election. And one of the things that they did was they rescinded a moratorium on drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf that had been in place for 25 years, congressionally. So for 25 years we had bipartisan agreement -- year after year after year it had to be renewed, and we had bipartisan agreement, and it was renewed -- and then all of a sudden it was 2008 when that ceased to be the case.

Now that the election has passed and oil prices have come down, we're hopeful that cooler minds will prevail and we can go back to that bipartisan support for the Outer Continental Shelf moratorium. And one of the things we're going to be calling for and have called for already is a reinstatement of that moratorium because of the harm. And that's the thing that nobody was really talking about, and which Jeff can expound on from first-hand experience, is the harm from oil spills, number one.

Number two, the climate change issue, which is about all the carbon that we've pumped out of into the air. People are now trying to figure out how to suck it out of the air and stick it back into the earth. Well, now we have some here that's offshore, it's hard to get to, it's already back in the earth, there's not that much of it, it's not going to make us energy independent and it's not going to make any difference in our gas prices. Let's leave it where it is and forgo the harm.

And then the third point, which I think Jeff also can expand on a lot, is: Of all the places we should be thinking about, the Arctic is really the poster child, because the Arctic is where -- first of all, it's where climate change is happening the fastest and we're seeing the biggest effects; we're potentially opening up new areas that could be drilled. But it's also a place where it's almost impossible to clean up any impacts from oil. So those are sort of the three pieces of our thinking on oil.

Short: From an environmental perspective, it is insane to me to condone any industrialization of the Arctic. The notion that the loss of sea ice is going to lead to tremendous new economic activities is almost culturally suicidal, because if we lose that ice, we are very likely to trigger runaway feedback loops that we can't control that will alter the planet irrevocably and to our detriment.

NJ: Are you worried that the recent downturn in gas prices will dampen enthusiasm for the green movement?

Short: Yeah, to the extent that it removes the incentives for conservation, I do worry about that. But the United States did heroic things in World War II, and given the threat that we are looking at from the loss of ice in the Arctic, it's not [too early] to resume such heroic thinking now.

And it wouldn't take much. If we were to accomplish nationwide a 30 percent reduction of energy use through conservation, that would translate to an 8 percent reduction of worldwide emissions because we emit so much. You would see that in the atmosphere in the next year as a measurable reduction, and it would be a profound example for the rest of the world. If we did that, we would have the price of oil down to around 10 bucks a barrel because it's so sensitive to marginal costs.

NJ: Interior Secretary-designate Ken Salazar supported lifting the offshore drilling ban this summer. Does that worry you?

Savitz: I think that, like I said, a lot's changed since then, so we're hopeful that in this new scenario, with the lower fuel prices and the greater recognition of the climate change problem and a different political climate, that as part of the Obama administration he can take a fresh look at the moratorium.

NJ: Obama's choice to head the EPA, Lisa Jackson, has been criticized over her record, and I think some people were surprised he didn't pick more of a slam dunk for the environmental community. What was your take?

Savitz: I don't think we were expecting Obama to pick all slam dunks for us, or necessarily any slam dunks for us. We weren't expecting an activist government. But having a government that focuses on real science and recognizes that science is an important factor in making decisions is going to be such a huge change for us. I think that somebody with the right intentions following the Obama ideology in the EPA is going to be such a breath of fresh air.

NJ: Who are the relevant agencies involved in offshore drilling?

Short: Minerals Management Service. They deal with exploring, and NOAA deals with cleaning it up.

(Laughter)

NJ: Which one do you think has the better job?

Short: Well, from recent press reports, I'd have to say MMS.

(Laughter)

NJ: If you could make the public understand just one or two things about America's energy situation, what would they be?

Short: Use the conservation weapon. And by that I mean, look at what OPEC did recently: They took 2.2 million barrels a day of production off the market. If the United States reduced its consumption through conservation by 30 percent, that would remove 7 million barrels a day from the market. That would plummet the price, and it would be good for the environment. So I would recommend that we use the conservation weapon right away. And it would make gas cheap.

Savitz: All the investments that we're talking about making now to stimulating the economy, we should try to channel as much of that as we can into things that also stimulate a green energy economy -- and by that I mean really green. If we're going to spend taxpayer dollars on it, it should be something that's really not going to release carbon or cause any long-term environmental impacts of other sorts -- things like wind, including offshore, and solar. If we could overcapitalize those instead of oil drilling or digging up coal or funding quote-unquote clean coal technology -- which most environmentalists I know don't really believe is ever going to pay us back -- we could make a huge difference, we could really start to turn this ship around.

You know, we don't have till 2050 to figure this out. As Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change], has already said -- so I don't want to take credit for it -- it's really what we're going to do in the next one to three years that's going to decide whether we win this battle or not. Everybody wants to talk about 2050 and 2025, but it's very dangerous to do that because then you think, "Oh, I've got 20 more years to figure this out," and we just simply don't. Honestly, it's this president, it's things like this stimulus package that he's talking about, that we're really depending on.