The Fake ANWR Debate

Don’t miss George Will’s take on the nation’s ongoing, 25 year, debate over harvesting oil from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). Will argues the environmental arguments are a cover for collectivism -- socialism in Europe and contemporary liberalism in America -- to enlarge governmental supervision of individuals' lives.

More importantly, Will lays out the best argument I've seen for harvesting ANWR’s oil:

Area 1002 is 1.5 million of the refuge's 19 million acres. In 1980 a Democratically controlled Congress, at the behest of President Jimmy Carter, set area 1002 aside for possible energy exploration. Since then, although there are active oil and gas wells in at least 36 U.S. wildlife refuges, stopping drilling in ANWR has become sacramental for environmentalists who speak about it the way Wordsworth wrote about the Lake Country.

Few opponents of energy development in what they call "pristine" ANWR have visited it. Those who have and who think it is "pristine" must have visited during the 56 days a year when it is without sunlight. They missed the roads, stores, houses, military installations, airstrip and school. They did not miss seeing the trees in area 1002. There are no trees.

Opponents worry that the caribou will be disconsolate about, and their reproduction disrupted by, this intrusion by man. The same was said 30 years ago by opponents of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, which brings heated oil south from Prudhoe Bay. Since the oil began flowing, the caribou have increased from 5,000 to 31,000. Perhaps the pipeline's heat makes them amorous.

Ice roads and helicopter pads, which will melt each spring, will minimize man's footprint, which will be on a 2,000-acre plot about one-fifth the size of Dulles Airport. Nevertheless, opponents say the environmental cost is too high for what the ineffable John Kerry calls "a few drops of oil." Some drops. The estimated 10.4 billion barrels of recoverable oil -- such estimates frequently underestimate actual yields -- could supply all the oil needs of Kerry's Massachusetts for 75 years.

Flowing at 1 million barrels a day -- equal to 20 percent of today's domestic oil production -- ANWR oil would almost equal America's daily imports from Saudi Arabia. And it would equal the supply loss that Hurricane Katrina temporarily caused, and that caused so much histrionic distress among consumers.

Let’s do this already.

Comments

[Walter E. Wallis]

ANWAR is a power play by the left, a stick in the eye of capitalism.

[Notta Libb]

Check out a funny site dedicated to the absurdity and satire nature of saying "It's All George Bush's Fault!"

http://www.itsallgeorgebushsfault.com

Regards,
Notta Libb