You’ve heard the argument before; by way of Mad Libs, it tends to go something like this: [Insert state] only has [insert number] billion barrels of oil available for production right now, which only represents [insert number] years of consumption at current rates. So therefore: We shouldn’t lift a finger to produce any of that energy, since it won’t make a dent in supply, price or in decreasing our dependence from hostile, foreign regimes.

It’s an argument that’s rendered completely asinine when the word “oil” is swapped out for any other commodity of value that exists today. Take gold. Could you imagine anyone with half a brain ever suggesting that, since lots of people use the stuff, we shouldn’t get all that excited about stumbling across a few bricks of bullion on our way to work?

Oil shouldn’t be any different: Like gold, it’s a commodity whose value exists (virtually) independent of the market. Sure, prices will go up and down, but oil is energy. And energy is the capacity to do work. And work? Well, work is the misery of the drinking class. But it also happens to be what makes modern civilization both modern and civil. Work makes it work.

But there’s another, more serious deficiency in the “there’s not enough to make a difference, so let’s call the whole thing off” argument. Consider how it’s applied to the state of Alaska. As Alaska governor Sean Parnell wrote in the Wall Street Journal last month:

Alaska’s OCS contains an estimated 27 billion barrels of recoverable oil and 130 trillion cubic feet of recoverable natural gas. That’s more than twice the amount of oil that has been produced on Alaska’s North Slope since the Trans Alaska Pipeline System went online in 1977. Counting its OCS reserves, Alaska likely has more than 30% of the nation’s recoverable oil and gas.

27 billion barrels of oil – a conservative estimate provided by our friends at the Interior Department, which, as we know, has a vested interest in minimizing to the fullest extent allowed by law the estimated amount of energy available (but forbidden) to the American people.

Now, you don’t need to be a geologist to understand the most basic point here: 27 billion barrels is a hell of a lot of oil. It’s more oil than 310 million Americans can possibly use over the course of nearly four consecutive years – and from just one source! But it’s precisely upon this argument in which opponents of responsible energy development love to sink their proverbial teeth.

And sometimes, those opponents emerge from the unlikeliest of places. Take for example the editorial that appeared right here in Alaska this week, not from the California-owned and energy-anathematic Anchorage Daily News, but from the student newspaper on the campus of the University of Alaska Anchorage:

So, if we divide 27,000,000,000 barrels of oil, by the 19,500,000 barrels we slurp down each day, that’s a grand total of 1,384.61 days, to be exact, or 3.79 years.

Oh. Well that doesn’t do much for our overall dependence on foreign oil problem. Maybe we should revise that claim to say, “Alaska can meet U.S. total energy needs for almost as long as it takes a college student entering as a freshman this year, to graduate and enter the job market as a productive member of an economy that is once again plagued by dependence on foreign oil.”

Yikes. Keep in mind that this blather is coming from the same university that published a landmark study in March 2009 which found that accessing some of the enormous energy resources that reside offshore Alaska could create 35,000 direct jobs for Alaskans, $72 billion in wages, and $6.6 billion in state revenue. Probably a good guess that the student editors of The Northern Light, UAA’s student newspaper, didn’t take the time to give that paper much of a look. Or that many of them even know from whence the funds for their annual Permanent Fund check come.

Lack of due diligence aside, the argument they’re making here is as intellectually dishonest as they come. Yes: 27 billion barrels of oil might only meet four years of U.S. demand, but guess what? Just because energy is produced in Alaska doesn’t mean that energy cannot or will not be produced anywhere else.

Amazing stuff, isn’t it – the idea that we can tap MORE THAN ONE energy resource, in MORE THAN ONE state, at the same time? You know what’s even more amazing? Energy production creates value and jobs up and down the delivery chain – and that’s true no matter where it’s produced, how it’s produced, or how much is produced. And one more thing: for every unit of energy we can produce up here in Alaska, that’s one less unit of energy we need to buy from foreign dictators.

It’s true! And hopefully, it’s a reality our best and brightest at UAA will stumble across as they try to avoid those bricks of gold on the way to their future place of employment.