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On the north slope of Alaska is a place called the Artic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). Our government set aside 19 million acres for the herds of caribou up there, which total around 130,000 head. That’s cool. That’s excellent! I would like to see herds of buffalo like that here in the lower 48. There’s also lots of oil there. Geologists believe it could contain one of our largest oil reserves ever found. There are some estimates that it could hold around 16 billion barrels, or the same amount we would be importing from the extremist Moslem dictatorship of Saudi Arabia for the next three decades. The same Saudi Arabia that gave us fifteen of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers. But there are some Americans who are afraid of drilling for oil in ANWR. They told us through their media blitz that the drilling would despoil a beautiful landscape and do “irrevocable harm” (Sen. John Kerry) to the caribou. I remember their TV commercials – beautiful mountain scenery, nice soft music, etc., etc. They wanted us to picture oil derricks sprouting up like weeds all over the mountains and through the woods, to grandmother’s house they’d grow! In reality, the drill sites are well over a hundred miles from any beautiful mountain scenery. Alaska’s Senator Frank Murkowski described ANWR as “a flat, treeless, almost featureless [coastal] plain.” It is a place of vicious winds and blizzards where “temperatures can drop to minus forty degrees Fahrenheit” and where “there are 56 days of total darkness during the year, and almost nine months of harsh winter.” Those beautiful mountain scenery commercials with butterflies and bunnies just now fizzled away, didn’t they? People can barely survive there, but caribou love it – that is, when they migrate back there for a very short “summer.” The caribou are quite amazing creatures. They have survived ice ages, grizzly bears, wolf packs, hungry humans, monster swarms of mosquitoes, scarce food, and dangerous far-ranging yearly migrations. The caribou metabolism is so hardy that it takes 2 ½ times more tranquilizer to knock out a caribou than it does to knock out a rhinoceros. And caribou are supposed to have irrevocable harm done to them by the noise of trucks and drilling machines, and the lights and smells of small human settlements? The Prudhoe Bay caribou herd has tripled in size since we drilled for oil there. Would the caribou even take much notice of our being there? Of the 19 million acres we’ve set aside for them, Presidents Bush’s plan calls for exploration on only 2,000 acres. That’s one-hundredth of 1% of ANWR. ( New York City’s Central Park is 843 acres.) Would drilling for oil in ANWR set a bad precedent? No. We’ve already drilled for gas and oil in 29 wildlife refuges without harming the creatures or the environment. You see, drilling for oil today isn’t what it was years ago. Remember the movies of wildcatters striking it rich when the well came in, and the oil gushed hundreds of feet in the air? It ain’t like that today. It’s all hi-tech with computers, new equipment that’s capable of amazing new techniques, labor unions, and EPA officials hovering about. Plus there’s always environmentalists hanging around with long range cameras, waiting for a mishap to film and report – as there should be. Labor Union boss, James P. Hoffa, and the Teamsters Union supported drilling in ANWR. Not only would it create around 735,000 new jobs, but “Alaskan oil fields currently use the most environmentally sensitive technology in the world,” he said. Minor oil spills at drill sites are inevitable, the same way gasoline tanker-truck accidents are inevitable. But should we stop drilling for oil or stop delivering gasoline to your town because of it? If some caribou were curious enough to come close to a moving vehicle or a drilling platform, and could somehow be threatened, the Conservatives in Congress passed legislation that would have given the Secretary of the Interior power to halt oil development during the summer. Clinton vetoed it. Developing the oil fields in ANWR had the support of 75% of Alaskans, most of the state government (including the Democrat Governor Tony Knowles), and even the Eskimos. The Mayor of the Eskimo’s North Slope Borough, G. N. Ahmaogak, said, “We know that development of energy in ANWR is a responsible use of the land. People who have never been to Alaska but are opposing ANWR oil development need to visit and speak to us.” When the ANWR oil development legislation was put to a vote the Senate shot it down 54 to 46. How did your Senators vote? Some of the anti-oil politicians and activists responsible for this are Clinton, Gore, Daschle, Lieberman, John Edwards, Joe Biden, Robert Kennedy, Jr., Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, Jerry Brown, HRClinton, Ted Turner, Brooks Yeager (World Wildlife Fund), Deb Callahan (League of Conservation Voters), Brad Pitt, Jennifer Aniston, John Travolta, Martin Sheen, Mary Tyler Moore, Ed Asner, Norman Lear, and the Sierra Club. Even the Democrat’s 2000 Party platform had a plank that demanded a ban on oil drilling in ANWR. Thanks guys. Did you check your brains at the door? |