LAT: ANWR Long a Major Environmental Battleground(opening wedge; CA next?)

Refuge Has Long Been a Major Environmental Battleground
The nation's oil and gas needs help Bush gain support for drilling. But foes say the limited supply isn't worth the lasting damage.

By Julie Cart and Ralph Vartabedian, Times Staff Writers


No environmental battle in the last 25 years has aroused more passion than the seesaw struggle over the future of a strip of coastal tundra at the northern tip of Alaska.

The Senate's vote Wednesday to allow oil and gas drilling there did not seal the fate of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Legislative hurdles remain. But for the first time in more than 20 years of debate, the president and Congress have signaled that they agree the nation's energy needs justify tapping into the nation's largest wildlife preserve, a place many Americans believe should be untouchable.

Moreover, both proponents and critics of drilling in the preserve see Wednesday's vote as the opening wedge in a broader campaign, reflected in pending legislation to open other areas currently off limits to energy exploration, including areas off California's coast.

Oil industry executives have tied exploring the preserve to a larger agenda of opening areas that are closed to exploration. In a speech in Washington in June, Exxon Chief Executive Lee R. Raymond said: "We will need to muster the political will, based on a realistic energy outlook, to allow further development of the energy resources to be found in the United States. This includes those that may be offshore California and Florida, in the Rocky Mountains and in northern Alaska."

Language in the pending energy bill would give the Interior secretary the authority to override California's bipartisan opposition to exploratory drilling off the coast, where, according to some industry estimates, there are at least 1 billion barrels of untapped oil....


http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-arctic17mar17,0,6111307.story?coll=la-home-headlines

...Language in the pending energy bill would give the Interior secretary the authority to override California's bipartisan opposition to exploratory drilling off the coast, where, according to some industry estimates, there are at least 1 billion barrels of untapped oil....


I am afraid that FL Senator Mel Martinez is going to find out that his pro-drilling vote in Alaska yesterday, in exchange for his deal to exempt off-shore Florida drilling for 5 more years will also be overridden by this little detail in the pending energy bill.


There is no doubt whatsoever that these people will sell any and all of us out for their own greed and lust for power.

that's driving this whole thing.

.. and/or revolution!



http://www.moveoncalifornia.org/

off the coast of California and you will see me and my 72 year old mother chained to the Federal Building here in SF in protest. :mad:

Santa Barbara and Newport Beach would be great starts since both typically vote Republican

Using the US's current consumption rate of 20 million barrels per day, which is probably not a realistic rate as consumption increases over time, and it would be years before the oil were available for use. What incredibly greedy, horrible, assholes these people are.

for oil about oil, the invasion and occupation of a sovereign nation that hadn't been doing anything to anyone is not about oil so stop saying that!

*Dear America; WAKE THE FUCK UP.
BEFORE it's too late would be nice.
Thanks.