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Should we drill for oil in Alaskan preserves?

Edited by Aureth
0
Your rating: None
No, save the animals!
55% (64 votes)
Yes, save the country!
15% (17 votes)
I don't live in America.
5% (6 votes)
I don't know what you're talking about.
0% (0 votes)
I don't care, one way or the other.
2% (2 votes)
Feren
23% (27 votes)
Votes: 116
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Since Feren is listed as an option [again] let's ask him his opinion.

Hey Fer? Please bless us with a rant on why/why not oil should be drilled for in Alaskan preserves if you would. Thank you.

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Since Feren is listed as an option [again]...

And this time, it's not my fault! :)

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I've already ranted on this in past remarks, when I originally submitted the newsbit to Flayrah when GWB first started touting this as a viable option. Brer has already made some fine remarks in this thread. This article from The Onion also makes a pretty good tongue-in-cheek answer to drilling in national parks and wildlife reserves. Not much I can say other than "Dear god NO. This idea is bad bad bad bad BAD."

-Feren
"We use them for divine retribution."

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environmental irresponsibility won't save anything. the only way the u.s. will ever not be dependent on 'forign' oil is when it stops being dependent on oil entirely. there's a large and growing infrastructure of suppliers of nuts and bolts of alternative to it. the oil and automotive industries don't need to be subsidised at the expense of everyone and out of taxpayers pockets at that - which is what every mile of pavement does. and the same goes for fossel fueled power generation. nukes arn't inheirently evil but that's not the answer either. there are zillions of small to medium dams up in the mountains that arn't generating power that could be - many of them once were. it isn't the alternatives that are lacking but rather vested intrests that seem to be promoting a kind of collective death wish of our species and for our planet. i don't mean the extinction of one more pretty butterfly, ugly fish or fur bearing carnivoour is going to be the end of live as we know it - but - has everyone forgotten where every molicule of o2 in our earth's atmosphere comes from? and stability of those cycles of renewal does rest on diversity - or so i've been led to believe - even in geology. throwing environmental responsibility out with the bath water will only increase incidents of asthema and disentary and we'll still have just as much of an energy shortage/crysis - that's where this pandering to the most powerful vested lobby in the us at this time is headed. so no - drilling in alaskan preserves is not only wastefull and irrisponsable - it is also totaly unnessesary - and well not and cannot accomplish its stated goals - which responsable alternatives and sensable priorities (alone) can.

stay well and keep doing the wonderful things that you do ... ~;)

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A quick word of advice: capitalization is your friend. O_o

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>there are zillions of small to medium dams up in the mountains that arn't generating power that could be - many of them once were.

But even those are not without their environmental cost. Have you been following some of the controversy in recent years about cutting at least some of the dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers in the northwestern USA in an effort to restore the salmon populations that have been decimated by said dams (with ripple effects on other plants and animals in their ecosystems)?

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aggreed - everything IS tradeoffs and questions of what can and cannot be done - and existing political will and all that. the question becomes what is the least harmful that CAN be done. and it's not like there's any one panacea that's the whole answer. i for one am not looking for scapegoats but sustainable solutions. and seeing how quickly we can consume remaining reserves of non-renewable resources can never be more then a stop-gap.

stay well and keep doing the wonderful things that you do ... ~;)

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ah but the real tanstaafl are the natural cycles of renewal upon which all life as we 'know' it (including our own!) is utterly dependent (and not the movement of little green pieces of paper that track nothing but the ficle winds of human emotion).

Making everyone dependent on energy produced by the consumprion of finite resources is backward headed from jump.

What will happen when the oil runs out is that everyone who hasn't starved will once again be able to breath. Water wheels and windmills will still turn and energy from them will still be able to be used to create ever more subtle tecnologies. Energy from combustion will however no longer be universaly feasable.

But why wait for the oil to run out and mass starvation to occur among the vast majority who are neither economicaly advantaged nor living in a healthy rural environment?

The infrastructure to suply the nuts and bolts of environmentaly sound energy and transportation will need to be already in place if the transition is to occur without massive dislocations. Many of the benifits of that transition could be enjoyed immediately without having to wait for it to become a despirate neccessity.

The future IS 'solar' - but how far into the future that will be is as much a question of political will as of resource management (and/or mismanagement as the case may be ... ~;)

stay well and keep doing the wonderful things that you do ... ~;)

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The eskimos who live there want oil drilling.

http://www.anwr.org/ for more information.

Richard Reid
Captain; Webship Corwinda
http://www.furnation.com/corwinda

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I heard a report on NPR's All Things Considered (or, it may have been Morning Edition) a few days ago. They interviewed Eskimos in one village who wanted the drilling due to the economic development it would bring, and they interviewed Eskimos in a village that didn't want it, because of the potential danger to the wildlife, which is still their method of survival.

So, there's no one opinion among the native residents. Not surprising.

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They're called Inuit, people, not Eskimos.

Eskimo means 'eater of raw meat' and is really quite insulting to any Inuit I've met (five, since I KNOW people will ask)

Melissa "MelSkunk" Drake

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I can't vote for or against, but can't say I don't care either. I think it is POSSIBLE to extract oil from ANWR without hurting anything (much), but am not naive enough to think that big oil companies WILL.

This is fantasy, but I would like to see small, environmentally conscious independent operations go up there and work on the problem in a limited scope operation, employing local labor. I think that way everyone gets what they want.

However, an even bigger and more attractive fantasy is that we stop trying to find new sources of petroleum and focus on renewable energy resources and conservation instead. Many pharmaceutical products and safety devices need plastics and petroleum distillates, and I'd rather we conserve what we've got for use in those areas instead of burning it to heat some Colorado trophy-home or fuel another Ford Excessive.

Oh, I'm sorry... :) Aureth asked for a rant from Feren, not me. Heh...

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I didn't vote in this poll, since my opinion is somewhere between the two primary choices. I'd give primary importance to preserving the habitat of the animals who live there now, since we as a species have destroyed the habitat of too many other animals on this planet. Having said that, if the oil drilling can be done with sufficient safeguards and oversight to keep environmental damage to a minimum, then I don't see a problem with it. So do I trust the oil companies and the government to do a clean enough job? I'm not sure.

The above assumes that the need for oil is a given (if we didn't get it from here, we'd have to get it from somewhere else), and doesn't address more global, long-term concerns about oil (or other fossil fuel) usage.

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Interestingly enough, the 'only 2000 acres!' claims of the area that would be affected by said drilling are turning out to be so much phlogiston:

http://www.time.com/time/columnist/waller/article/0,9565,170983,00.html

The figure counts only the drilling platforms themselves and the area of the stanchions supporting any future pipelines actually touching the ground. New roads and pipelines are conveniently ignored. The claims of '700000 new jobs' seem to share the same rectal origins.

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National Geographic did an excellent feature in its August, 2001 issue which put the proposed area to be explored for drilling into perspective. This is worth checking out if only for the incredible map (requires Adobe Acrobat Reader) that accompanies the article.

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Why bother? The amount of oil involved is a drop in the bucket. Why should we let Bush subsidize his oil buddies by giving them government land? Any price reduction will just be taken as more profit, so even the SUV-driving yuppies won't benefit much.

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And the amount of oil they'd get out of there would last the US a whole three days. A week at the tops.

-Feren
"We use them for divine retribution."

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Drilling in Alaska is not ideal, but judging by recent events it might be better than drilling in the ocean.

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