This remainds me of the old joke about a city slicker driving a pickup truck and wearing cowboy boots and hat. A fellow asked him, “do you own a ranch”, “no”, the city slicker replied, “but I watch ‘Bonanza’ every day”…
All right, if building refineries is not a feasible option (for the oil companies that is because I certainly do not want the government doing it) what about standardizing the gasoline that we consume throughout the US. I have heard/read that there are up to 40 different types of gasoline formulations used in the US. I would think that if everyone used the same it would bring down the price of gas and also help the environment (since we could make it so that the most environmentally friendly formulations are used). does this alternative make sense?
Just because the area doesn’t aesthetically appeal to you, personally, Lisa, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have inherent value as wilderness. It is awfully cold there, but in pictures I’ve seen it certainly doesn’t look like a lunar landscape, anyway. I’ll link some pictures when I have time. And by many accounts it will affect defnitely this otherwise untouched ecosystem, and affect it in an irrevocable sort of way. Strip mines in eastern Kentucky may only occupy a few hundred acres individually, but the resultant erosion and water pollution have certainly affected the environment many miles away from each mine. And I think the Yosemite analogy is good. I think we need to recognize limits on what land we can exploit and destroy and what land we can’t. A national park like Yosemite would be a good example of land we shouldn’t destroy. A national wildlife refuge, even one that looks ugly to LisaN, would be another example, to me. And it’s especially important to realize that the oil in ANWR is not sufficient to meet any long-term need we will have, and that the impact on us consumers will be neglible at best - maybe a penny less a gallon for two years. Hooray.
Well, there are pros and cons to more standardization. There will always have to be a little bit of variability, e.g. gasoline sold in Minnesota in the winter needs to be a little more volatile so that your car will start at -20 degrees, whereas that same gasoline would be too volatile for Texas in the winter where it’s warmer.
Value to whom? To people who will never see it, never use it and really never understand the potential benefits to drilling? I believe you simply have to balance the cost vs benefit.
And your point is? IOW why would we save 19MM acres of untouched wilderness? To what purpose? Why not chase all the people out of the state and leave it to the moose and caribou?
When were these strip mines dug? IOW there have been huge changes in what is allowed and not allowed in taking mineral resources from the earth. I used to live in Utah. The Kennicott Copper Mine was pretty ghastly looking. I don’t think you could dig a huge hole in the ground like that these days. Again, I think the pipeline is a very good example of “the sky is falling” mentality not coming true. Environmentalists make their living scaring people and if people are no longer scared by their threats of doom, they don’t collect as much money. Amazing how the same economic principles apply to Greenpeace or Sierra Club as apply to an oil drilling company.
Being no expert in oil drilling, I’m not sure we will know what ANWAR holds until the driling commences. It may not be worthwhile. But this at least opens the possibility. Remember this is a TINY percentage of a huge area. You cannot equate 19MM acres with Yosemite either in geologic formation or use.
I think people often associate ‘wanting to drill in anwr’ with ‘people who want to blindly destroy an environment’ which is not true. I’m for drilling, but I also know that it will be done in a responsible way.
Call me a crazy tree-hugger, but I think untouched, pristine wilderness has value in and of itself, even if that environment doesn’t support a large tourist trade, or doesn’t have lakes to boat on or roads to drive on, or grosses LisaN out. When I hike through a forest, I see that the forest has plenty of value just existing, regardless of whether I’m there to see it or not, and regardless of whatever value the paper mill might put on it. I see that inherent value of wilderness as God-given. We really don’t have much large, pristine, virgin wilderness anywhere in the country. I think we need to fight to protect it. You mention cost vs benefit, and that’s exactly right. The cost is potentially big here; the north Alaskan wilderness could be irrevocably scarred by drilling and processing and pollution. The benefit is uncertain - maybe we’ll pay a penny less a gallon for a little while, maybe we won’t.
Isidore thank you SO MUCH. It’s amazing how the facts interfere with people’s emotions and feelings. sbcoral where do you live? I live in a very populated part of Oregon. But there are literally THOUSANDS of acres of untouched wilderness within an hour or two of our big cities and much more in the central and eastern part of the state. Honestly I do not believe in a scorched earth mentality but where do you draw a line? There are NINETEEN MILLION ACRES up there. So what if they drill on less than a percent of that desolate area?
Do you live in this region? Don’t you think the locals should decide their own destiny rather than having it forced on them from on high?
Luckily it’s the federal government that gets to decide what to do with federal land, otherwise you’d have local officials micromanaging military bases and other federal facilities.
It’s federal government land, in fact land deemed a Wildlife Refuge. It is my land, it is your land. It’s not private land.
There is very little private land in Alaska.
Maybe because you live in Oregon, you take wilderness for granted. People like me who live in the eastern US can look out our windows and see formerly idyllic farm land or woods being bull-dozed into parking lots and strip malls. It has been my time out west that gave me a real appreciation for the land and for wild country. I think there’s a difference, too, between undeveloped land like in Oregon’s national forests and true “wilderness” - land
I’m sorry but that is a bit of baloney. Oregon has many many acres of completely inaccessable wilderness. No roads, no trails, no human presence at all. Yes there are many national forests with parks and camping grounds but this is a HUGE state with thousands of acres of land that is completely unused for any human purpose. I could tell you lived on the east coast. It’s a different world there and you need to understand how your personal experience is clouding out the facts about this particular project. No one is talking about strip malls or fast food joints in ANWR.
Do you mean there is no evidence, or do you mean you haven’t heard of any evidence. The caribou are not the only animals in the arctic: ie Polar Bears den and give birth in this area