Some good ideas for letters to the editor & to Iow members of Congress.
Phyllis Mains PS Happy Holidays!
Wednesday, December 21, 2005
Ugliness oozes out of pro-drilling ranks
By JOEL CONNELLY
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST
Behind the smoke screen of its campaign to "save" Christmas, the right
long ago found a backstage use for the Feast of the Nativity: relaxing
environmental safeguards when no one is looking.
This Christmas, the dig it, drill it crowd is going after the biggest
prize of all.
Using a vital defense appropriations bill, Republican Senate leaders are
seeking to open Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling.
The key votes will come early today.
A big liability exemption for the pharmaceutical industry is tucked into
the bill. But the real battle is over the Arctic refuge.
Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, has made strategy midnight clear: Use
Congress' exhaustion and Christmas to carry the day.
"This is the endgame, OK, and I have been involved in endgames for a lot
of years," the Senate's raging old bull told reporters. "As far as I'm
concerned, I'm not leaving. I have canceled my trip home. I will be here
through Christmas if necessary."
The House of Representatives caved in on Monday and passed the bill. A
trio of Washington lawmakers who opposed refuge drilling -- Reps. Dave
Reichert, Norm Dicks and Rick Larsen -- actually voted for it.
"They just had all the votes. They voted us down," said Dicks, who had
tried to delete refuge drilling from the bill.
Asked if he has ever seen a like maneuver, the 29-year House veteran
replied: "No. Never. This is really unbelievable. This is what happens
when one party is in complete control."
Not quite.
A freshman Washington lawmaker, Sen. Maria Cantwell, has shown the guts
to butt heads with Stevens, whether it comes to drilling rigs in the
refuge or Stevens' bid to eviscerate protection of Puget Sound.
Cantwell is talking filibuster. So is Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., the
Democratic Party's outspoken backer of the U.S. military mission in Iraq
-- lately reviled by his party's left wing.
Republican leaders are holding a stick over heads of potential opponents.
Hold up the defense bill, and we will blame you for leaving our troops in
a lurch.
Such covering fire caused Dave Reichert to scurry for cover.
"We must support our troops. I will always put our troops first, always,"
said Reichert, a Republican who has made a big deal out of opposing ANWR
drilling.
Lieberman is a wiser man made of sterner stuff.
"They expect because they've had the gall to put this on a bill that
funds our men and women in uniform, that we will not have the nerve to
fight something we think is wrong," he said. "Well, they're wrong."
Democrats offered to fund the Pentagon until the end of February under
what Congress calls "a continuing resolution," allowing time for
deliberation.
"Ted Stevens wouldn't allow it," Cantwell said.
The campaign to drill the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife
Refuge was on the cusp of success once before, in 1989, only to have the
Exxon Valdez hit Bligh Reef and oil 1,300 miles of Alaska's coastal
beaches.
A key aspect, unusual in American history, has been slander directed at a
natural place.
"It's empty, it's ugly," Stevens said of the coastal plain in October. "A
flat white nothingness" is how Interior Secretary Gale Norton described
it.
Stevens once characterized Gwich'in Athabaskan Indians, who depend on the
Porcupine caribou herd for sustenance -- and oppose drilling the animals'
calving grounds -- as "Canadian Indians who live in Alaska."
As one who's been there, let me tell you about our visit to the coastal
plain on a 2001 raft trip.
We paddled into an eddy on the Canning River. A fox scuttled across the
tundra. A golden plover squawked at us. We found her nest on the tundra
and gave it a wide berth.
Caribou materialized out of a fog bank coming off the Beaufort Sea. They
vanished, and then reappeared. The next day, I stropped to the top of a
nearby bluff.
Twenty-four caribou crossed a stream just below me. Later, I awakened
from a nap. Two caribou stood 20 to 30 feet upwind, sniffing for danger.
Back in camp, two musk oxen trundled between the tents and the cooking
area.
Nothingness? Not on your life. Ugly? I'd use that term to characterize
Sen. Stevens' methods.
Over 95 percent of the Alaska coastline is open to oil and gas drilling.
Vast new territory has been opened to exploration in the National
Petroleum Reserve west of Prudhoe Bay.
The oil industry insists it will leave a tiny "footprint," but the
history of Prudhoe Bay suggests it will be a Bigfoot.
Prudhoe has nearly 4,000 wells and 500 miles of gravel roads. Its annual
releases total 56,000 tons of nitrogen oxides and as much as 11 metric
tons of carbon dioxide. Between 1996 and 1999, the pipeline and oil
fields averaged about one small spill (mostly of diesel fuel) each day.
Noting predictions of output from ANWR-- from 2 to 5 percent of the
nation's current daily oil consumption -- former President Carter makes
an irrefutable argument.
"By driving more fuel-efficient cars, we can conserve more than the
refuge would produce," he said in a 2001 interview. "Instead of tearing
open the heart of our greatest wilderness, we can live wisely."
And therein lies the danger of refuge oil development, not just to
critters but to all of us.
It simply perpetuates our country's addiction to fossil fuels. Americans
are the ones who will really get drilled.
P-I columnist Joel Connelly can be reached at 206-448-8160 or
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