Bush Lusts over ANWR Oil And Obscene Profits

PRESUMABLY BECAUSE OF THEIR ROCK-SOLID FAITH in America’s stable, friendly relations with the Middle East’s oil-exporting nations, last Thursday our Senators defeated a proposal to allow oil exploration in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). The vote was 54 to 46.

Leading the opposition were the Democrats, who cited their reluctance to disrupt what they call "one of the few parts of the United States untouched by technology." Said Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman, "I contend the development would do irreversible damage to this national treasure." Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle joined the chorus as well. "We are just not going to allow Republicans to destroy the environment," he crowed. "And that's exactly what this issue’s been all about, from the very beginning."

These words are reminiscent of a New York Times piece written not long ago by former president Jimmy Carter. "The simple fact is, drilling is inherently incompatible with wilderness," wrote Carter. "The roar alone — of road building, trucks, drilling, and generators — would pollute the wild music of the Arctic, and be as out of place there as it would be in the heart of Yellowstone or the Grand Canyon."

Such soulful statements about potential environmental destruction give the average listener the impression that under the proposed oil drilling in ANWR, vast tracts of pristine Alaskan land would suddenly become covered with concrete and steel. But nothing could be further from the truth. Alaska, whose population is just slightly greater than that of Washington, DC, is about four times the size of California and contains fully 60 percent of our country’s official wilderness areas. ANWR, located on the northeastern side of the state, comprises roughly 19.5 million acres, an area about the size of South Carolina. Of this, the oil-drilling project would occupy only 2,000 acres, a patch of land about the size of Dulles Airport – or just over one ten-thousandth the ANWR region. If the entire state of Alaska were divided into 158,500 equal-sized parts, the proposed ANWR oil-drilling site would occupy exactly one of those parts.

The potential benefits of oil drilling in ANWR are considerable. Energy Department estimates suggest it could produce more than 800 million barrels of oil per year. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) calls ANWR "the largest unexplored, potentially productive onshore basin in the United States." Senate Republican Phil Gramm of Texas points out a crucial reality to which the "environmentalist" crowd has turned a blind eye. He asks, "Is no one awake to the fact that we have problems in the Middle East, that we have a growing dependence on oil, that there are profound national security implications of producing as much oil as we will import from Saudi Arabia in the next 30 years, on 2,000 acres of land in a state with 317 million acres?" Given recent events, it has become painfully clear that Saudi Arabia is no dependable friend to our nation. Neither is Iraq, whose oil shipments to the U.S. could be replaced for seventy years by ANWR’s projected yield.

Yet even as we stand on the edge of a cliff, potential hostages to blackmail by oil-exporting nations that literally despise our country, the "environmentalists" continue to preen as though the most serious issue at hand is whether the Alaskan wilderness will be damaged. But as Jonah Goldberg has pointed out in National Review, for much of the year the supposed noise pollution of which Jimmy Carter spoke "would occur in pitch darkness, drowned out by a 120-degree-below-zero wind chill." And as for the question of whether the relatively tiny area of ANWR drilling might constitute an "eyesore," it should be noted that this area is shrouded in total winter darkness for five months of the year. Then for another five months it is bathed in perpetual summer sunshine that illuminates swarms of mosquitoes so thick that, according to the villagers in nearby Nuisquit, there are some days when a person cannot even open his mouth for fear of inhaling the tiny pests. Television news features on proposals for ANWR oil exploration generally show beautiful panoramas of mountains and rivers, as though such natural wonders would be threatened by the venture. But that is not at all where the oil would be drilled. For one thing, it is illegal to drill in those areas. Secondly and more practically, there is no oil there. The only spot where it is legal to drill for oil is on ANWR’s coastal plain, which is largely a vast tract of peat bogs and mud puddles.

Polls show that a majority of Americans favor ANWR oil exploration because, unlike Democratic Senators and silly "environmentalists," they see the inherent danger of our nation remaining overly dependent upon foreign interests. Indeed, the situation has grown worse over the past three decades. During the Arab oil embargo of 1973, the U.S. imported 35 percent of its oil from abroad. Today, this figure has swelled to 53 percent, and the EIA predicts it will rise further to 62 percent by the year 2020 if domestic oil supplies don't increase. Because of environmental concerns about drilling, refinement, and exploration, in 2001 our country produced 40 percent less oil than it did in 1970. With recent rises in domestic energy usage, the U.S. now imports 10 million barrels per day. Such policy is not only irresponsible, but is potentially disastrous.

"Environmentalists" warn not only that oil drilling would bring harm to the Alaskan landscape, but also to the wildlife that lives there. Yet such predictions are discredited by the fact that more than three-fourths of Alaskans support careful energy exploration in ANWR, including the Inupiat Eskimos who live in ANWR’s coastal plain. They have seen, first-hand, the Prudhoe Bay caribou herds grow nine times larger in the 34 years since oil was discovered there. A recent count of the Central Arctic caribou shows herd numbers at their highest level ever, though "environmentalists" had predicted their virtual extinction once the oil companies got to work. In short, the Alaskan environment has thrived while oil has been produced under the world’s strictest environmental standards. As Alaskan pollster David Dittman puts it, more oil seeps out of cars each day in the average Wal-Mart parking lot than has been spilled in Alaska during the past twenty-five years.

Is it not time for politicians to stop grandstanding in order to paint their opponents as evil-eyed demons eager to destroy the environment in exchange for a few drops of oil? Is it not time to put our national security above their petty, selfish scrambles for power?