The Wall St. Journal reports that Al Gore is urging Congress “not to overturn a federal ban on offshore drilling”. It quotes a Gore speech thusly:

"The larger point for me is that it has nothing to do with short-term relief from gas prices, and probably nothing to do with long-term relief," he said of calls to lift the moratorium. "You take an oil deposit right off the coast of California -- that's more likely to be sold to China."

Never mind the fallacious claim implied by Gore’s second-quoted sentence, that a rightward shift in the supply of oil from California won’t affect the US price of gasoline if that oil is sold to China.

Let’s focus on the first part of the first quoted sentence: “The larger point for me is that [offshore drilling] has nothing to do with short-term relief from gas prices”. If that’s supposed to be an argument against lifting the ban on offshore drilling, then Gore is suggesting that it isn’t worth undertaking any cost today for a benefit that won’t arrive for ten years. Isn’t this the same Al Gore who says we need to start taking costly steps today to slow global warming, in order to save us from rising sea levels, etc., that will otherwise arrive in thirty to fifty years?