After eight years of all-out domestic drilling, we're just as hooked on foreign oil as ever, and

we've significantly depleted our remaining domestic reserves. In the last eight years, Wyoming has had more drilling permits approved than the states of Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, and Utah combined. And prices at the pump have gone through the roof, while oil companies reap billion-dollar profits.

The United States has 3 percent of the world's oil resources but consumes 24 percent of the world's oil resources. According to a Department of Energy report, drilling in Alaska's pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge wouldn't yield any oil for 10 years and would only save the consumer 2 cents a gallon. Two-thirds of the wells drilled in the world are in the United States. Given these numbers, it doesn't take a math genius to figure out that we can't drill our way to a solution. In testimony before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, legendary oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens said he believes that oil production has peaked in this country and stated that, "We have to go to renewables, there's no question about it."

What did we get in Wyoming with this drilling frenzy? We now have massive industrialization across Wyoming's basins, the loss of many of our open spaces, declining wildlife populations and severed migration corridors, smog in Pinedale that's worse than Los Angeles, contaminated groundwater, and a host of rare wildlife heading for the Endangered Species list. And higher gas prices.

Why didn't more domestic drilling translate to lower prices at the pump? The United States' reserves are shrinking and the bulk of the drilling in Wyoming has been for natural gas and coalbed methane, which you can't put in your gas tank. It's very clear that the rush to drill Wyoming has made the oil and gas industry very wealthy. Shell's 2007 revenues of nearly $32 billion were up 21 percent over 2006, Encana's first quarter 2008 revenues are up 41 percent, and Anadarko's first quarter 2008 revenues are at the $2 billion mark.

While taxes and royalties from oil and gas may generate a large tax base, they don't outweigh the adverse economic impacts on residents and businesses. The bulk of the profits do not stay in Wyoming to create economic multipliers here, but instead end up in Denver, Houston, Oklahoma City and Canada.

Now, in hindsight, we can look back on the strategy of increasing domestic fossil fuel production as a failure for Wyoming and the United States. It didn't wean us from foreign oil, there is certainly no evidence that it increased our security, and it certainly didn't result in affordable prices for consumers. The only success this policy can claim is inflating the profits of the oil and gas corporations to record levels.

Meanwhile, by maximizing oil and gas drilling in Wyoming, we have effectively mortgaged the long-term economic engine of travel and tourism, which can fuel our economy sustainably for the foreseeable future, for a few years of budget surpluses and the explosive growth of the boom.

The Forest Service manages the way logging happens on public lands by regulating exactly where the timber sale will go, how big and how many the cut units are, and exactly which trees can be cut and which have to be left standing. There is no such management of oil and gas development on our public lands; the industry decides which lands will be nominated for lease, how many wells will be drilled in a project, and where the wells will go.

And little room is left for wildlife - most crucial wildlife habitats are open for drilling with only token timing limitations on drilling and construction. The Rawlins BLM Field Office granted 72 percent of the oil industry's proposed "exceptions" to wildlife protections from October 2005 to September 2006. The Pinedale Field Office granted 88 percent of "exception" requests in 2006-07.

Now that we've tried uncontrolled energy development, perhaps it's time to throttle back energy development to a measured pace. In doing so, we can provide better habitat for wildlife, high-quality recreation opportunities for residents and tourists alike, and a steady pace of economic growth that doesn't overwhelm the ability of small communities to evolve and cope with growth. And into the bargain, the oil and gas in our state will last longer, giving us more time to develop long-lasting economic engines to carry us forward when oil and gas run out.

In the short term, conservation and reducing our demand, strengthening the dollar, and reducing commodity market speculation will help reduce energy prices more effectively than continuing to accelerate domestic drilling.

Carmi McLean of Laramie is the public outreach director of the Biodiversity Conservation Alliance.