Globetrotting Famous Cousin Jeff Weighs In On ANWR, Misleading Media, and Psycho Ecos

Greg,
This guy is exactly right. The ANWR debate has been about deception for the last 20 years. The Sierra Club, CNN and all of the left leaning media can get away with this deception because so few people have actually ever been to ANWR. (I have been to ANWR.) Musk Ox are not very common in the area being considered for drilling, but even if they were, why would they give a shit? They are big giant beasts who’s only enemies are mosquitoes and maybe native Inuit hunters. The same with the caribou, who are common in the proposed drilling area. There is 30 years of experience with oil production operations on the Alaskan north slope and the caribou are not the least bit bothered. Yet the environmental lobby constantly claims drilling in ANWR will destroy the caribou. It’s ludicrous.

In this case CNN is really a pawn to the extreme environmentalist. If you really understand the issues, the only way to be truly opposed to drilling in ANWR is if you are simply anti-development of any kind. There are people in the Sierra Club that think they are anti-development of any kind, but the percentage of people that fall in to this category is miniscule. They have to use mis-information to try to somehow make the issue relevant to others. They also like to say that the native people are opposed to ANWR development. This is only true of the villagers that live in the Brooks Range who are miles away from the potential development and won’t get any direct financial benefit.

In 1988 when I was coming back from ANWR, NBC News was doing a piece on the issue. They went to film a previous Chevron drill site. However, because the drill site had been remediate so well they couldn’t find it. So instead they filmed the local Inuit village’s gravel pit and claimed it was Chevron’s drill site. Chevron asked them to do a correction the next day. NBC said they didn’t do it on purpose (and therefore are not libel) and they don’t do corrections. That was the end of it.

None of this BS would matter if we actually had a functioning government in Washington that could take on and resolve any issue of significance. I think we should drill in ANWR for many reasons, but at this point, the main one is simply so we could get it over with and move on to the many more important issues that we should be debating.

Congrats to the Lady Bears. (Big 12 Conference Tournament Basketball Champs! Second Seed in their Region in the NCAA Tournament!)

Update:
Jeff gets results - from Powerline:

The Senate has voted to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil exploration. The portion that will be open to drilling (assuming the Senate approves its budget and the House goes along) is a largely barren coastal section about the size of a regional airport in a refuge the size of the state of South Carolina. Drilling will occur only in the winter, when the place is frozen solid, using sophisticated technology that will scarcely leave a footprint come spring, when the single caribou herd that grazes in the refuge comes calling.

The vote was 51-49.

Posted by deacon at 02:56 PM