Op-Ed: ANWR-- Raise the Bridge or Lower the River?

Buy an ad on DigitalJournal.com

With the lack of clear thinking, and an almost visceral hatred of the natural environment that has characterized this president, the administration chose to put the greed of its cronies ahead of the good of the nation.

In the 35 years since the Arab oil embargo this country has chosen, through both Democratic and Republican administrations, to ignore our growing dependence on foreign oil and the vulnerable economic and military position that this dependence has put us in.

As if that were not stupid enough we have chosen as a nation to not only ignore the problem in the hopes that it would simply go away, we have done just about every crack brained thing we could think of to exacerbate it!

Instead of developing fuel efficient vehicles, as anyone with an ounce of brains should have seen as vital to national security, we have instead relaxed the CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards and developed a mania for gas guzzling behemoths.


The term stupid does not even begin to cover it.

Now that the chickens have come home to roost and oil prices are through the roof what do we do? Behave like responsible grownups and find ways to conserve oil? Are you kidding? This is America dude, we don't have to act like no stinking grownups!

That at least is the mantra of those who are willing to rape the environment for the sake of a few more years of tooling around in their pig-mobiles. And so the American gas-a-holics turn their baleful gaze on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).


America's Clown Prince.

The Bush administration, headed by a man who never managed to run a successful business in his life, a man who actually figured out a way to go broke drilling for oil in Texas, is cheerfully estimating that there are as many as “10.4 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil…” http://www.doi.gov/news/030312.htm in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).

Of course they also said that Saddam had WMD’s as well as ties to Al Queada and that we would be welcomed into Iraq as liberators so it is fair to say that their powers of prognostication are somewhat suspect.

So for a measly 10.4 billion barrels of "technically recoverable" oil (whatever that means) we are being asked to rape one of the last pristine wildernesses left in America and perhaps drive the polar bears and other endangered species to extinction.


And what exactly does this country get for selling its birthright for a mess of pottage? (Genesis 25:29-34) Since our current oil consumption is 19.6 million barrels a day 10.4 billion barrels comes to a measly 526 days or one year and five months!

We are being asked to destroy one of the last pristine wildernesses and all we get in return is less than one and a half years of puttering around in our ego gratifying pig-mobiles!


Here's a bright idea!

On the other hand there are far more reliable estimates that simply changing ONE light bulb in every home in America to a compact florescent would equal removing 1.3 million cars from our roads.

Since the typical American household has around 100 light bulb sockets, simply replacing all the incandescent bulbs in America with energy saving bulbs would not only obviate the need for ANWR oil but would dramatically reduce the amount of oil that this nation must import from abroad. The fact that these bulbs would also remove trillions of pounds of pollution from the air as well should not be held against the them by ecology hating Conservatives.

If that is not enough incentive it is estimated that each and every 100 watt incandescent bulb that is replaced with a fluorescent one saves the consumer $60 each over the life of the bulb. Multiply that by one hundred bulbs per house and we are talking real money.

So, when faced with a rising river and a flooded bridge, which is easier, raising the bridge or trying to lower an entire river? Most people would opt for the bridge but when it comes to energy supplies a lot of people have their priorities “bass ackward.” Their solution to a rise in oil prices, to give but one example, is to look for more oil instead of using their heads and trying to save some of the oil they simply waste.

Light bulbs are only the tip of the iceberg. Raising CAFE standards, promoting hybrid cars, mandating and subsidizing better insulation of homes and businesses, promoting the adoption of solar power in homes and business and giving rebates for buying energy saving appliances would not only protect the environment, they would break the back of the oil cartels, reduce or eliminate our dependence on foreign oil and improve national security.

Not only that, but a government-sponsored program to develop green technology, similar in scope and urgency to the program that put a man on the moon, would help revive our ailing economy.

So that's the choice. Go for the knee jerk quick fix and rape the environment for the sake of a few more days worth of oil or do the grown up thing and switch over to green technology. What is it to be. Shall we raise the bridge like common sense dictates or are we going to try to lower the river?