>>As the Will article which Lane quoted pointed out, ANWR is bigger than Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Delaware, combined, while the area drilled would be less than 1/6th the size of Dulles airport.<<
Tim -
People who are in favor of drilling in ANWR are fond of saying that. It's quite misleading.
If you look at a topographic map of ANWR, you will discover that there is a very small area that is flat, right on the shore. That area is where the oil companies want to drill. It is also the area where caribou breed.
It may seem silly to care about caribou so much, but they are a big part of the food chain up there, and significantly disrupting their ability to breed, which drilling in ANWR would most definitely do, would therefore disrupt a lot of other things.
ANWR seems to be the poster child for people who find environmentalism at the expense of producing more oil to be foolish. But it does seem to me that there are plenty of other places, including offshore, for the oil companies to find oil. They should stop agitating about ANWR and start lobbying for more offshore drilling.
- Allen |
