Drilling should be allowed in all areas not protected by law or where an accident could devastate the eco-system, fisheries or beaches which local economies depend on. The problem with Bushies is they literally want to drill EVERYWHERE, and they systematically lie about the environmental impact.
For instance in ANWAR they lied and said only a few square miles would be affected, but they were only counting the acreage of the actual rigs, not the thousands of miles of roads, pipeline, the ports, the other infrastructure which would crisscross the wildlife refuge. Basically the scheme is to lobby like hell to get permissions passed wth an oil-friendly administration then just cheat.
In Alaska because of the near perma-frost you also have an enviroinment where a piece of garbage takes many-many years to bio-degrade. Polar bears and other wildlife would become dependent upon human dumps, ingest toxins and die, the whole natural system of things would be screwed up. ANWAR is basically a huge giveaway of a public treasure to private oil companies with payoffs to politicians, unions anbd Indian tribes. Also, no one even knows if there's a greta amount of oil there. The test results are secret, so the oil companies can wildly exaggerate how much is there. Same as they're doing in the Rockies by including non-recoverable oil in their estimates. This is all a big lie to make Americans think we can drill our way out of oil depenency on the Arabs.
The only real answer is a Marshall Plan to get off oil as our main energy source over the next 10-20 years. A big job but it has to be done and it can also create a half million jobs. |
