On the ANWR and the 'nuclear option'
an email responding to Gil's message (see previous post)....
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yeah, I thought that might get a rise out of you...
Re: the ANWR, I'll accept that many environmental advocates are soft-headed doomsayers who have never been to the ANWR. But not every last one of them; some enviros have been there, have studied the issues and the possible drilling effects (even with high-tech equipment that will minimize the footprint), have looked at the projections for what could be extracted from the refuge, and still oppose opening it to development. I will agree with you that ANWR serves as a direct-mail fundraising tool for many groups -- you need something to rattle in the air to raise money, though lord knows there's no shortage with this administration -- and I'm sure that has shaped their position, away from the more moderate facts about ANWR sometimes. But there remains a persistently large number of experts who know the area, are not raving partisans, and do not believe it should opened. Part of it is the idea, I'm sure, that it is easier to rope something off entirely than to allow the place to be opened and then try, in the decades after, to slow or moderate the expansion of drilling there. Once you open the box, then the force of industry and the drip-drip, chip-chip of lobbying and laws and big-money oil interests in succeeding years ultimately controls how much happens out there. Total prohibition's easier than trying to stop the relentless incremental expansion of drilling in ANWR, backed by industry and GOP legislators, once it's open, despite whatever promises the GOP and the industry make now. I guess that's part of it.
Look at how the timber industry has essentially gutted Oregon's smart-growth laws in the last year -- they backed a "property rights" ballot initiative that passed, that allows landowners to either demand "market-value" compensation from the state for their land (usually farmland) or sell it to developers, in places where development had been prohinited, like rural orchards on the Olympic peninsula. They mounted radio ads with old ladies talking about how they wouldn't be able to pass their land on to their heirs -- a total red herring, when in fact the timber companies just wanted a way to buy and develop or cut huge swaths of protected land in Oregon. The state, of course, cannot afford to compensate these people with tens of millions of dollars per claim, so the land will just be sold and developed. Similar initiatives are getting ready to go in several other states, all of them backed by land-use interests.
http://www.dailyvanguard.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2005/02/25/421ee7a017552
I just offer that as an example of how difficult it is to block what developers want to do, so perhaps it's easier to keep the ANWR closed entirely. Can we not have one place where drillers aren't allowed to go, even if tourists don't go there? ANWR was an anomaly in a country where so many places are available for oil exploration, because of that Carter-era law, and now that it's open, I guess we have to just cross our fingers and hope that in the fullness of time, we can rely upon the conscience of lawmakers and the promises of oil companies. Which is, perhaps, not the best position to be in, given precedent. Would it reduce the US' dependency on other countries if ANWR produces as expected -- yes, slightly. In the face of huge US demand for foreign oil that shows no sign of abating, it seems like a drop in the bucket, frankly.
You'll get no argument from me at all about the hypocrisy of enviros who drive SUVs and seem to believe that oil comes out of the ether. And I also agree that environmental advocates should focus on a smart comprehensive energy policy and things like CAFE, which I think many of them do. I would love there to be a much stronger CAFE standards for trucks and SUVs. I would love for the huge-SUV federal tax breaks to go away. I hate SUVs and I think this country is in a state of utter delusion in the way it swallows gasoline and oil. I'm old enough to remember the crises of the '70s, but after the oil glut all those lessons were lost, obviously. And I am as frustrated by the NIMBY-ism of people as you are.
Mel Martinez of Florida voted against the Cantwell amendment yesterday in exchange for a promise that there would be no drilling off Florida's coast until 2012, Talk about hypocrisy.
Re: the filibuster. I'm afraid I have to disagree completely. Partly because the filibuster is essentially the only protective tool left to Democrats against Republicans who control all three branches of government and are utterly -- I mean, utterly -- in thrall to the business lobby. If that wasn't clear to me before, it is now that I work for a [censored] and see it in action every day -- the huge amounts that corporations pay to lobbyists and donate routinely to members of Congress; the big-business legislation that moves quickly to the top of the agenda. It's the way business is done here. If Bill Frist does decide to go with the "nuclear option" over judicial nominees -- even though Democrats have blocked a tiny proportion of really awful judges, compared with the dozens, the dozens of Clinton judges that were blocked by the GOP -- you will see the Senate shut down completely, and it should. The Senate rules give a constitutional right to individual senators that is designed to force either compromise or gridlock, and I frankly could not be happier. Many of the problems the GOP is so mad about re: the filibuster could be easily solved simply by slightly moderating their policies and compromising ina few areas, as every single previous administration and congressional majority has inevitably done -- but they refuse to, they just insist on doing it their way with no consultation of the minority at all, and instead want to trash the rules of the Senate for the first time in American history. All because they think of this as a brief moment of total control they may not see again. I say, thank God for the filibuster, and let the whole damn Senate shut down except for 12 spending bills, and we can play the blame game in public with them just like in 1995, when they got their asses kicked.
So that's MY rant for the day.
----------------
yeah, I thought that might get a rise out of you...
Re: the ANWR, I'll accept that many environmental advocates are soft-headed doomsayers who have never been to the ANWR. But not every last one of them; some enviros have been there, have studied the issues and the possible drilling effects (even with high-tech equipment that will minimize the footprint), have looked at the projections for what could be extracted from the refuge, and still oppose opening it to development. I will agree with you that ANWR serves as a direct-mail fundraising tool for many groups -- you need something to rattle in the air to raise money, though lord knows there's no shortage with this administration -- and I'm sure that has shaped their position, away from the more moderate facts about ANWR sometimes. But there remains a persistently large number of experts who know the area, are not raving partisans, and do not believe it should opened. Part of it is the idea, I'm sure, that it is easier to rope something off entirely than to allow the place to be opened and then try, in the decades after, to slow or moderate the expansion of drilling there. Once you open the box, then the force of industry and the drip-drip, chip-chip of lobbying and laws and big-money oil interests in succeeding years ultimately controls how much happens out there. Total prohibition's easier than trying to stop the relentless incremental expansion of drilling in ANWR, backed by industry and GOP legislators, once it's open, despite whatever promises the GOP and the industry make now. I guess that's part of it.
Look at how the timber industry has essentially gutted Oregon's smart-growth laws in the last year -- they backed a "property rights" ballot initiative that passed, that allows landowners to either demand "market-value" compensation from the state for their land (usually farmland) or sell it to developers, in places where development had been prohinited, like rural orchards on the Olympic peninsula. They mounted radio ads with old ladies talking about how they wouldn't be able to pass their land on to their heirs -- a total red herring, when in fact the timber companies just wanted a way to buy and develop or cut huge swaths of protected land in Oregon. The state, of course, cannot afford to compensate these people with tens of millions of dollars per claim, so the land will just be sold and developed. Similar initiatives are getting ready to go in several other states, all of them backed by land-use interests.
http://www.dailyvanguard.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2005/02/25/421ee7a017552
I just offer that as an example of how difficult it is to block what developers want to do, so perhaps it's easier to keep the ANWR closed entirely. Can we not have one place where drillers aren't allowed to go, even if tourists don't go there? ANWR was an anomaly in a country where so many places are available for oil exploration, because of that Carter-era law, and now that it's open, I guess we have to just cross our fingers and hope that in the fullness of time, we can rely upon the conscience of lawmakers and the promises of oil companies. Which is, perhaps, not the best position to be in, given precedent. Would it reduce the US' dependency on other countries if ANWR produces as expected -- yes, slightly. In the face of huge US demand for foreign oil that shows no sign of abating, it seems like a drop in the bucket, frankly.
You'll get no argument from me at all about the hypocrisy of enviros who drive SUVs and seem to believe that oil comes out of the ether. And I also agree that environmental advocates should focus on a smart comprehensive energy policy and things like CAFE, which I think many of them do. I would love there to be a much stronger CAFE standards for trucks and SUVs. I would love for the huge-SUV federal tax breaks to go away. I hate SUVs and I think this country is in a state of utter delusion in the way it swallows gasoline and oil. I'm old enough to remember the crises of the '70s, but after the oil glut all those lessons were lost, obviously. And I am as frustrated by the NIMBY-ism of people as you are.
Mel Martinez of Florida voted against the Cantwell amendment yesterday in exchange for a promise that there would be no drilling off Florida's coast until 2012, Talk about hypocrisy.
Re: the filibuster. I'm afraid I have to disagree completely. Partly because the filibuster is essentially the only protective tool left to Democrats against Republicans who control all three branches of government and are utterly -- I mean, utterly -- in thrall to the business lobby. If that wasn't clear to me before, it is now that I work for a [censored] and see it in action every day -- the huge amounts that corporations pay to lobbyists and donate routinely to members of Congress; the big-business legislation that moves quickly to the top of the agenda. It's the way business is done here. If Bill Frist does decide to go with the "nuclear option" over judicial nominees -- even though Democrats have blocked a tiny proportion of really awful judges, compared with the dozens, the dozens of Clinton judges that were blocked by the GOP -- you will see the Senate shut down completely, and it should. The Senate rules give a constitutional right to individual senators that is designed to force either compromise or gridlock, and I frankly could not be happier. Many of the problems the GOP is so mad about re: the filibuster could be easily solved simply by slightly moderating their policies and compromising ina few areas, as every single previous administration and congressional majority has inevitably done -- but they refuse to, they just insist on doing it their way with no consultation of the minority at all, and instead want to trash the rules of the Senate for the first time in American history. All because they think of this as a brief moment of total control they may not see again. I say, thank God for the filibuster, and let the whole damn Senate shut down except for 12 spending bills, and we can play the blame game in public with them just like in 1995, when they got their asses kicked.
So that's MY rant for the day.
posted by Will @ 3/17/2005 02:45:00 PM
1 Comments:
At 12:16 PM,
Bill said…
Wait. Oil doesn't come out of the ether? I don't believe that, Will MacPseudonym. The idea that oil comes from something other than the ether is pure, 100 percent junk science. As someone in my neighborhood -- who we call "Flanders" -- once said, "Would it really be part of His Plan for the Earth to run out of oil?"
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