A recent Pew Research poll showed rising public support for domestic energy exploration and development, including drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge. The widely reported survey results were just the latest evidence that high energy prices — gasoline, especially — have focused the public’s mind on the laws of supply and demand.

The political world is responding, too, as this story in Politico reports: “Back from an Independence Day recess that saw gas prices peak at more than $4.10 per gallon, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Monday that he’s hoping to entice a handful of Democrats to join him in supporting more domestic drilling, and an aide to Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) said it may be time for a new “Gang of 14” to break through the partisan impasse on energy issues.” Read that story with this other Politico piece – Dems’ new gas-pump villain: Speculators – and you get a good sense of the state of play on Capitol Hill.

Now we have any more evidence of the public’s increasing receptiveness to drilling, an anxious, even hostile reaction from green groups.

In an e-mail to a list originally developed in conjunction with the Live Earth concert — when was that, anyway? — the CEO of the normally mild-mannered, encouraging, sensitive group, We — or WeCanSolveIt.org — rails against the energy companies.

This is silly. Once again, we’re being held hostage by the big energy companies, and we’re paying for it at the pump. Some people think more drilling is going to help, but that sort of flawed thinking is what got us into this mess to begin with. Instead of prolonging our addiction to oil, we need to look beyond fossil fuels and invest in new solutions. It’s time to get real about our energy options.

Why remain captive to skyrocketing fuel prices when we can develop an economy based on efficient transportation and clean, free sources of energy (like the sun and wind)?

Silly, eh?

And the punchline: “We are a great country — with fantastic resources — and we will not be held hostage by dirty energy companies.”

It’s very much out of character, the tone. (The magical thinking about “free sources of energy” is completely in character, though.) It’s as if the group sees its moral high ground eroding to the reality of high energy prices.

Or perhaps the erosion is in its fundraising ability.

From the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, July 1:

Amid record gas prices, public support for greater energy exploration is spiking. Compared with just a few months ago, many more Americans are giving higher priority to more energy exploration, rather than more conservation. An increasing proportion also says that developing new sources of energy – rather than protecting the environment – is the more important national priority.

The latest nationwide survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted June 18-29 among 2,004 adults, also finds that half of Americans now support drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, up from 42% in February.

The public’s changing energy priorities are most evident in the growing percentage that views increased energy exploration – including mining and drilling, as well as the construction of new power plants – as a more important priority for energy policy than increased conservation and regulation. Nearly half (47%) now rates energy exploration as the more important priority, up from 35% in February. The proportion saying it is more important to increase energy conservation and regulation has declined by 10 points (from 55% to 45%)

This all makes intuitive sense, obviously. When you run short of food in the refrigerator, you don’t starve. You go to the local grocery store and get more food. When you run short of fuel and other energy sources, you go get more.

OK, it’s not a perfect analogy. You can use empty shelves in the fridge to inspire your diet, that’s true. But you do need food to live, and an economy needs energy to run.

(One quibble with the survey: We understand the reasons for the way the question is phrased, but it’s a mistake to conflate “conservation” and “regulation.” You can conserve without adding regulatory burdens.)

Amusing comparison of terrains at the Weekly Standard Blog, ANWR or the Red Planet?

The Martian polar bears are already under extreme stress, what with the warming and all.

UPDATE (3:50 p.m.): More, earlier, from Brian Faughnan. Here’s hoping that anti-ANWR types see the Ares of their ways.

From The Corner:

 From Missouri:

I would be more than happy to examine it again,” McCain said.

For years, McCain has opposed drilling for oil in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).

But McCain said he’d be willing to reconsider that stance as well.

Hat tip: The Sean Hannity Show

Go to ANWR, Senator, see how small the development site would be, how limited the harm to this “pristine” bog/tundra.  August is an inviting month there, notwithstanding the midges, mites and mosquitoes.

 UPDATE (9:15 a.m.): Charles Krauthammer, “McCain’s Oil Epiphany.” Halfway there, Senator:

His fastidiousness on [ANWR] is inexplicable. “I believe that ANWR is a pristine area,” he explains. Is it more pristine than the ocean, where he now wants to drill? More pristine than the Arabian Desert from which we daily beg the Saudi princes to pump more oil?

The entire Arctic refuge is one-third the size of the United Kingdom (which includes Scotland and Wales). The drilling site would be one-seventh the size of Manhattan Island. The footprint is tiny. Moreover, forbidding drilling there does not prevent despoliation. It merely exports it. The crude oil we’re not getting from the Arctic we import instead from places like the Niger Delta, where millions live and where the resulting pollution and oil spillages poison the lives of many of the world’s most wretchedly poor.

Meanwhile, Rep. Maurice Hinchley (D-NY) has another approach: ““We [the government] should own the refineries. Then we can control how much gets out into the market.”