ANWR to get drilled like a cheap whore
Submitted by kebernet on Wed, 03/16/2005 - 17:55
Tagged:
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Amid the backdrop of soaring oil and gasoline prices, a sharply divided Senate on Wednesday voted to open the ecologically rich Alaska wildlife refuge to oil drilling, delivering a major energy policy win for President Bush.
The Senate, by a 51-49 vote, rejected an attempt by Democrats and GOP moderates to remove a refuge drilling provision from next year's budget, preventing opponents from using a filibuster -- a tactic that has blocked repeated past attempts to open the Alaska refuge to oil companies.
CNN
Comments
RE: ANWR to get drilled like a cheap whore
Personally I dont think its a big deal really either way whether or not we drill in ANWR. Yeah its supposed to be a "wildlife REFUGE" but I dont think the drilling will really hurt much, if anything.
Now that said, I also dont think the drilling will HELP our energy needs or our dependence on foreign oil and so on.
Whats fucking stupid here is that politicians DONT GET IT (heard a Trent Lott quote today - "when are we going to get it, oil prices are rising . . .") in that if you REALLY want to combat oil prices and shit you should REDUCE YOUR DEPENDENCE not look for ANOTHER 6 MONTH SUPPLY AT BEST (estimates for ANWR).
Hell if we could pass CAFE standards (killed by Republicans the last few times they came up) and do something totally insance like INCLUDE TRUCKS (including fake trucks, aka, SUV's that manufacturers move to "truck" status just to adjust their CAFE) that were even a tiny bit better we could save more oil that will ever be found in ANWR (or virtually any other single deposit).
Finding MORE of something that is a limited resource is NOT the way to solve your long term problems (and just solving short term over and over leads to more long term, aka where we are now).
RE: ANWR to get drilled like a cheap whore
I HATE SUVs!!!! thats all I can say. That to me is what has driven the demand so high. My car gets ok gas mileage, and I am prepared to pay the price, but SUVs are just as you said... fake trucks. they are useless. If someone traded in(or burned) their SUV that gets 17-20 MPG, they can get a 4 door sedan with a V8 that gets 19-26MPG!!!! Not great, bit its an improvement. Also are trucks as needed by everyone ?? I know too many people that drive trucks as passenger cars... come on 12-13mpg??? ok use the truck when you need it, not just to drive to and from the gorcery store.
ugh, it probably is not my duty to say such things, but they are just my thoughts.
Damnit, lets car pool a little too.
Drilling in Alaska is a joke. Im not even thinking of the environmental impact (i think other things impact us more) its just a freaking waste. I'm a Republican and I vote against the drilling, so please dont blame us republicans for everything.
RE: ANWR to get drilled like a cheap whore
As I understand it, the problem isn't so much the land area drilling will use, but the installation of pipelines, roads and such could really fubar the migratory patterns across Alaska and Norther Canada, leading to the same problem we have in the north-central US where there are wildlife areas, but no clear corridors for the animals to migrate because of roads/development.
At any rate, the stupid thing is even if we did tap ANWR, the total expected oil production will only increase our supply by 2.1% annually. So MAYBE we will all save a nickle on gas. Woo hoo.
RE: ANWR to get drilled like a cheap whore
@anon "Republican" SUV hater:
I dont blame Republicans for everything, but I do blame those in congress being in the Republican party for being the party that has killed the CAFE standards the last few times out.
Also, I dont personally hate SUVs. In fact I quite like them. That said I admit they are not efficient and I dont own one because I think it would be silly to drive such just to commute to work and so on.
My point however was that there are a thousand other things we could do to increase our efficiency and reduce our consumption in terms of petroleum usage. And any one of them would be more beneficial, more a real solution, than drilling in ANWR.
RE: ANWR to get drilled like a cheap whore
Gee, just a few of us here make sense....why the ll can't congress make sense.
RE: ANWR to get drilled like a cheap whore
Dude, Im up for paying the extra cash to not drill there. And, I'd be willing to pay a a tax on my gas guzzler, provided the money would go to the deployment of more hybrids
RE: ANWR to get drilled like a cheap whore
Personally, I think adding a sin tax to non-fleet, non-farm SUVs would be a great idea.
I still think, though, Al Gore is still right on the money: people aren't going to get serious about energy until gas hits $5 gallon in 1994 dollars.
RE: ANWR to get drilled like a cheap whore
FYI, when ANWR was created in the 80's part of the 'package' that was part of that creation was the inclusion of a portion that could be utilized for oil exploration and drilling. Also, the caribou herds near the other Alaskan big oil area (the name escapes me) are actually thriving. Not due to the oil drilling by any means, but they aren't affected by it either.
RE: ANWR to get drilled like a cheap whore
Yo, good to hear from you heimann. Hows things?
RE: ANWR to get drilled like a cheap whore
I have hear this bantied about today: Sen Deminici had an editorial along these lines in the AJC today. What is wrong, however, is it is confusing two different things.
There is ANWR, which is, as the name implies, a Wildlife Refuge. There is also a large chunk of land that is part of the "Strategic Petroleum Reserve". They are however, two different things. There is some confusion on this point, though, because the administration is getting pushback on drilling in the SPR areas too, because of their wildlife. Ther was a story on Morning Edition today about the local Eskimos who actually FAVOR drilling in ANWR, but want the SPR to be left alone because it crosses over a wildlife rich area that they use for subsistence hunting.