"Dont make me kick your a$$"
Posted on 06/13/2008 5:08:06 AM PDT by Kaslin
Sen. John McCain said this week he would not drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for the same reason he "would not drill in the Grand Canyon ... I believe this area should be kept pristine."
Pristine means unspoiled, virginal, in an original state.
One wonders how pristine the Grand Canyon can be if it has roughly 5 million visitors every year, rafting, hiking, picnicking and riding mules up one side and down the other. Campfires, RVs and motels that do not conjure the word "virginal" ring around large swaths of it.
This isn't to say that the Grand Canyon isn't a beautiful place; it inspires awe among those who visit it. ANWR (pronounced "AN-wahr) inspires awe almost entirely in those who haven't been there. It is an environmental Brigadoon or Shangri-La, a fabled land almost no one will ever see. That is its appeal. People like the idea that there are still Edens "out there" even if they will never, ever see them.
Indeed, if Americans could visit the north coast of Alaska, as I have, as easily as they can visit the Grand Canyon, the oil would be flowing by now.
ANWR is roughly the size of South Carolina, and it is spectacular. However, the area where, according to Department of Interior estimates, some 5.7 billion to 16 billion barrels of recoverable oil reside is much smaller and not necessarily as awe-inspiring. It would amount to the size of Dulles airport.
Question for McCain: Has South Carolina been ruined because it has an airport?
Most of the images of the proposed drilling area that people see on the evening news are misleading precisely because they tend to show the glorious parts of ANWR, even though that's not where the drilling would take place. Even when they position their cameras in the right location, producers tend to point them in the wrong direction. They point them south, toward the Brooks mountain range, rather than north, across the coastal plain where the drilling would be.
In summer, the coastal plain is mostly mosquito-plagued tundra and bogs. (The leathernecks at Prudhoe Bay joke that "life begins at 40" - because at 40 degrees, clouds of mosquitoes and other pests take flight from the ocean of puddles). In the winter, it reaches 70 degrees below zero (not counting wind chill, which brings it to 120 below) and is in round-the-clock darkness.
A few years back, Jimmy Carter wrote of proposed drilling in ANWR in the New York Times: "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."
The roads are made from ice, hence constructed in winter, doing no permanent damage to the environment. As for the discordant notes such activity would introduce to the Arctic symphony, I don't know whether a falling tree makes a sound if no one is there to hear it, but I suspect that the "wild music" of the Arctic in winter is only euphonious to those - like Carter - who are not actually there to hear it.
Even in summer, people who actually live on the north coast of Alaska, like the residents of Kaktovik (just three miles north of the coastal plain where drilling might take place) overwhelmingly think good jobs in their backyard is music to their ears.
Meanwhile, is the "music" of the Grand Canyon really so pristine? Babies crying, kids chasing lizards, campers laughing, donkeys braying, cars honking: Why does this not trouble the consciences of Carter and McCain?
Perhaps it's because the analogy between ANWR and the Grand Canyon is spurious on its face. "Pristine," after all, is not synonymous with beautiful (there are ugly virgins), and "well-trafficked" is not the same as ugly (millions of people have seen the Sistine Chapel).
Indeed, before the age of environmental Romanticism had captured elite opinion in this country, such analogies didn't pass the laugh test. Both the New York Times and Washington Post editorial boards enthusiastically supported drilling in ANWR in the late 1980s. The Post noted that the area "is one of the bleakest, most remote places on this continent, and there is hardly any other where drilling would have less impact on surrounding life. ..." To say such things today is to unforgivably pollute the inane music of groupthink. And that's something even the "maverick" McCain will not do.
Yet no one seems to mind punching a gazillion holes into Texas soil and the Gulf of Mexico!
His stance on ANWAR alone, causes me to want to stay home in November. Only the radical history of BHO will get me to drag myself to the election booth.
I am not sure what you mean
We drill all over Texas and in the Gulf of Mexico. Why are these areas not environmentally sensitive but the ANWR is?
>>>>>Why are these areas not environmentally sensitive but the ANWR is?
Because in the romantic mind of the ernvironmentalist, ANWR is a virgin while Texas is a worn-out old floozie.
"Dont make me kick your a$$"
I had a conversation about drilling in ANWR yesterday with my Congressman’s office.
I knew from the get-go that I was out of touch, because one of the first things they told me was that “Congr. Moron’s constituents don’t want drilling.”
But, I protested, Congr. Moron’s constituents (by the way, I’m one of them) have Metrorail, Metrobus, bike paths into DC, and other options that folks in the midwest states like Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Wyoming - indeed most of the United States - simply don’t and never will have because this is such a large country. How selfish and self-centered and naive can Congr. Moron’s voters be, to ignore the fact that most Americans do not live in a dense urban Northeast metropolis of short commuting distances and several viable transportation options.
“Well, maybe they should be” said the aide. “Maybe they should make those choices and build more public transport.” “In Wyoming? In Missouri? From where? To where? That’s not an option for most of America.”
“Congr. Moron’s constituents are concerned about the environment and don’t want drilling.”
And downhill from there.
This is the thickheaded, irrational, and selfish arrogance that America is up against.
They will let us all starve for the sake of a small piece of land? I don’t buy it. This is total BS.
Congressman Moron depends on the environmental lobby to get re-elected.
These people do not represent the public. They represent themselves.
Hope fully the people will wake up
It's going to take a whole lot of fact-checking by a lot of folks to overcome the selfish and deluded intransigence of the environmental left (most of whom have never and will never see ANWR).
McCain graduated, as I recall, next to last in his Naval Academy class. The man is terminally supid and thoroughly monomaniacal. He might give a damn about the Grand Canyon because he lives in northern Arizona, but he turns a blind eye (or should I say a swollen jowl) to the corruption in the Border Patrol, and, especially, to the trashing of the “pristine” Sonora desert wilderness by tens of thousands of illegals.
“We drill all over Texas and in the Gulf of Mexico. Why are these areas not environmentally sensitive but the ANWR is?”
Because most Texans and Southerners aren’t fools subject to being hoodwinked by the Utopian fantasies of the left. Those states were eager for the economic development and lease revenue that offshore drilling brought, so they encouraged exploration and drilling, probably before the environmental movement become so entrenched nationally.
Their lives, however, will not be adversely affected by any of their policies. They will see to that.
As to the seconds statement, yep, this is total BS. Why do you think that makes any difference?
Methinks ANWR is, for the most part, merely a symbol to engage in political combat over. One side seeks to protect a nice area they’ll never see, while the other seeks to extract from it enough oil to make only a small dent in our consupmption; these positions are overblown into grounds for a huge knock-down drag-out fight (which I believe is the actual goal of the discussion).
In the meantime, nobody gives a hoot that the value of the dollar is, in fact, plumetting - a far more real problem than inflammatory rhetoric over fuel which is still far cheaper than in most other nations (a Belgian brewer is ‘bout to buy Budweiser fer Bob’s sake!).
I understand their mindset very well. They are trying to starve us out for the sake of "change". This is not a new concept. Fascist governments have done it throughout the ages.
Lacking that small piece of land, we will not all starve.
And therein lies the heart of the matter. The Libtard DhimmiRats, in cahoots with the enviro-whackos and tree huggers would much rather place the preservation of a barren, frozen trundra over the security of the US.
Unless the great mass of the population gets riled up, it will remain this way.
We must secure our energy future. That includes drilling ANWR, the norther tier states, both coasts, the Gulf of Mexico; developing additional refinery capacity; boosting research into alternative energy sources; expanded use of biomass solutions, solar, wind, hydro and geothermal.
We have the muscle; we need the will.
Speak for yourself. My Son was well on his way to expanding his business and becoming a well establish entrepreneur. His business and all his employees are now seriously threatened by the the price of gas. If the pubbies are looking to make a bunch of new Democrats out of the up and coming they are sure doing a fine job of it.
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