A picture is worth a thousand words – or in this case ten billion barrels. A group of ten House Republicans just did something few ecotourists have ever done – they visited Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) and saw first-hand the 2,000 or so acres of the 19.6 million acre refuge believed to lie on top of America’s single largest untapped source of oil. Anti-drilling activists have characterized this area as an environmental jewel, but the pictures of this expedition show a bleak, flat, nearly treeless expanse of no …
Yesterday CNN’s Wolf Blitzer interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), drilling her about her refusal to allow more domestic energy production. From the interview: BLITZER: There are a lot of people out there, including plenty of Democrats, who say one of the most important things to do right now is to resume offshore drilling off the coast of California, Florida, elsewhere around the United States. Take a look at this poll that CNN/Opinion Research Corporation recently did. “Do you favor offshore drilling?” Seventy-three percent said yes. “Do you oppose offshore drilling?” …
The following e-mail was forwarded to me today, and it’s just too good not to republish. Coupled with American Solutions’ petition with more than 1.2 million signatures calling for energy production, it is clear that oil drilling can mobilize the right like few other issues. First, do you know what ANWR is? ANWR = Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Now, a comparison: And some perspective: Note where the proposed development area is (in the ‘ANWR Coastal Plain’):
Skyrocketing gas prices are rapidly changing Americans’ priorities. Voters routinely identify energy costs as either the second or third most important issue. Considering that any economist will tell you that high energy prices are a major cause of recent economic sluggishness, and that the economy has been the No. 1 issue on voters’ minds for some time, the cost of energy has quickly become a defining issue for the nation. High energy costs were a big reason why liberal efforts to institute a carbon tax failed earlier this month in …
Echoing the sentiments of conservatives, Jay Leno last night on “The Tonight Show” chided Democrats for their repeated opposition to oil exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Leno’s punchline: Democrats say drilling in ANWR wouldn’t produce any oil for 10 years — the same point they’ve been making for more than 10 years now. President Bill Clinton vetoed legislation in 1995 that would have opened ANWR to oil exploration. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjfssrKGsBU[/youtube]
Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) has joined six of his Senate colleagues (Jeff Bingaman, Carl Levin, John Kerry, Susan Collins, Joe Lieberman and Ron Wyden) in introducing a bill “to increase the supply and lower the cost of petroleum by temporarily suspending the acquisition of petroleum for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.” The SPR is the nation’s emergency oil stockpile, and it currently stands at nearly 700 million barrels, close to capacity. Nonetheless, the Bush administration is still adding to it, at a rate of around 100,000 barrels per day. Dorgan claims …
