We should leave what is left of the earth's oil where it is. At the same time, we should be looking at technologies that may enable us to replace the missing oil with a syntheic whale-like blubber substitute because we can't afford to kill any more whales if they are needed for other things in the future.

Don't conservatives know anything about science? Underground reserviors of crude oil lubricate the earth's crust and keep earthquake/volcanic activity to a minimum. The reason for startling increases of both earthquake and volcanic activity over the past 50 years can be directly linked to how much oil we have already sucked up from under the earth's crust.

The natural lubricating properties of oil over the past 5 gazillion years has stabilized the earth's crust by minimizing friction between tectonic plates, causing the surface of the earth (where most of us live) to become less volcanic and gassy than it was many eons ago before we was here. If we remove most or all of that oil, we will wish we only had to worry about global warming... followed by global cooling, with intermittent periods of mild temperatures and occasional precipitation.