It never ceases to amaze me how silly many on the left are about the prospect of drilling in ANWR. Any reasonable solution to our dependence on foreign oil should include:
2.) Research for alternative fuel sources other than the outrageous slush-fund known as ethanol subsidies, which should be exhibit A in any argument against having the Iowa Caucus first.
3.) Increased Cafe standards
4.) Radical improvements to Clean Coal
5.) Nuclear plant construction and research in storage of nuclear waste, as well as an administration and Congresss with the political will to actually store the waste somewhere, rather than the rag-tag temporary storage everywhere in the country.
6.) Tax credits and incentives for fuel efficient vehicles, energy efficient appliances, energy efficient homes
7.) Increased refining capacity
8.) Increase oil exploration and smart extraction policies
9.) Conservation campaigns
10.) And for goodness sakes, end the tax loophole for SUV’s. Are we out of our damned minds?
And those are in no particular order, yet all are necessary. Demagoguing Democrats railing that Bush isn’t pressuring the House of Saud to increase production isn’t solving our problem- it exacerbates it. Pretending that temporarily releasing or stopping to fill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve does anything is like giving aspirin to a hemorraging patient.
Likewise, Republicans have their heads up their asses on the other half of the issues on this list. Why a comprehensive energy strategy that makes sense has become such a political football is beyond me.
*** Update ***
Toren Smith is shrill on the subject of nuclear waste. Being shrill is good, I am learning.
Kimmitt
1.) Domestic drilling
…
yet all are necessary.
I’m not sure this case is as obvious as you make it out to be.
That said, if the Administration had just finished four years of successful conservation programs and massive expansion of research into alternate fuel sources, then came forward and said, “Look, this is getting us somewhere, but we could really use the crude that’s probably buried under ANWR. Let’s talk about a way to get at it without damaging the vast majority of the scenery,” it’d almost certainly get a much more receptive hearing. Since they really haven’t done, say, six of the other nine things above, it starts to sound like drilling in ANWR has nothing to do with reducing dependence on foreign regimes and everything to do with . . . drilling in ANWR.
Mason
Just for the sake of argument, I’ll agree with you, Kimmitt.
So what? Drilling in ANWR is inherently wrong?
Paul
What unmitigated bullshit, Kimmit. The Donks are insane with the unimaginable prospect of permanent minority status and have been reduced the level of self destructive rebellious adolescents. Bush will never get a receptive hearing from these reflexively obstructionist assclowns on anything, and the Repubs need to grow a spine and do what the MAJORITY of Americans elected them to do.
The footprint for extraction in ANWR is the equivalent of a sheet of newspaper on a tennis court, so your “Let’s talk about a way to get at it without damaging the vast majority of the scenery”, is just more spin rooted in the left’s Rousseauian anti democratic-capitalist agenda to bring down the West, particularly America, whether you useful idiots know it or not.
Tool.
Birkel
The caribou are dying in ANWR due to mosquito larvae. The only way to save the caribou is to allow humans to go to ANWR so that they will solve the mosquite problem (which will be a nuisance to the human drillers) humans will experience.
So let’s all agree to save the caribou who are suffering! Drill ANWR now.
*************
Or, perhaps we should recognize that greater drilling lowers the incentive to conserve or research new technologies. So increased drilling may be a bad idea if the goal is to generate long-run energy independence for the United States and the increased security that would come with that outcome.
And then there are the short- and mid-range goals of security and energy independence…
Troublesome…
JKC
While I’m agnostic aboiut ANWR, let me make this proposition to you, Paul:
How about I come over to your house, and dump a nice pile of hot, steaming cowshit in your living room. It will only take up about one percent of the available living space, and the fact that it’s piled in the doorway should only be a minor inconvenience.
You agree to that, and then you can go off on rants about “leftist tools.” Until then, try to remember that name-calling is not the same thing as debating.
John Cole
How about I come over to your house, and dump a nice pile of hot, steaming cowshit in your living room.
ANWR is not private property.
Robert Zimmerman
I would like to remind your readers that the drilllng in ANWR amendment that passed in the House budget resolution only allows for drilling in the 2,000 acres that were set aside for this very purpose in 1980.
Try this link
Justin Faulkner
I think to me the problem is not drilling in ANWR per se, but that Bush doesn’t have a comprehensive energy plan, or if he does he’s keeping it a great secret. ANWR is just a giveaway to oil companies, and that doesn’t seem worth the price.
KC
John, you’re right. I’ve known liberals who hear the word “nuclear” and go ballistic. After I toured Yucca Mountain in Nevada (I was with a friend who is a journalist), I went to a press conference on the subject. While there, I proceeded to get into a conversation with an anti-nuclear activist. He berated me when I said I’d actually prefer a few new nuclear plants to other forms of domestic energy creation. I explained to him that nuclear plants emit steam, much better for the enviroment than smoke, but he’d have none of it. I agreed with him that mining uranium can be a bad thing, that the nuclear waste problem had to be solved, but could not get him to admit that there were also some beneficial things about nuclear energy. It was amazing.
On the other hand, I’ve known conservatives who act as if it’s an attack on their manhood to raise cafe standards or invest in cleaner energy producing technologies. My father is one of them. Hybrid cars are frankly, too pussy for him, he’s been sold on the large trucks equals big balls theory. He thinks oil is a plentiful, boundless substance, ours for the taking if we’re willing to drill in our National Parks. Cafe standards are pointless liberal concepts to him, something only Green Party weaklings push for.
My point: There’s definitely entrenched stupidity on both sides of this debate.
John Cole
The only arguments against CAFE standards that hold any water to me are the libertarian ones, and I simply reject those.
Why? Because I can.
Randolph Fritz
Some good conservative reasons:
The ANWR has all of six months reserve of petroleum, at present rates of use. Given its ecologically unique status, why does anyone even think it is worth drilling there? Why risk a truly irreplacable ecological resource for scarcely enough oil to irritate an eyeball?
Global warming is not going away. (If you don’t believe this, refer you to realclimate.org.) The Islamic world isn’t getting any more stable or friendly. Why aren’t we working day and night on alternatives to fossil fuels?
I tend to regard fission reactors on a planetary surface as a technology better suited to saints and angels than human beings. (Want to guarantee security against terrorism? Think the Chinese are going to run a clean nuclear fuel cycle?) That said, I would support nuclear power if carefully engineered and regulated and in conjunction with a program to eliminate fossil fuel use.
Conservation is the cheapest form of energy.
See? Conservatives can think these thoughts too.
ppgaz
ANWR is moot. It will make a dent in neither the current situation, nor in the longterm situation. It’s a political play on both sides of the issue. Symbolic value only.
I can’t believe that in May 2005 people are still talking about trying to get the Saudis to increase production. All indications are that their production has peaked. I someone has solid data that their production has significant room for growth, let’s see it.
Even if there is a small increase possible using more and more aggressive measures, it’s going to be short-lived and illusory.
The fact is, big increases in the future are going to have to come from sources like oil sands. Before you get there, you are going to see oil and gas prices ride a roller coaster as never before. If we are not paying $5.00 for gasoline within 36 months, I will come right here and eat my (Michigan Wolverines) hat.
Bush’s call for increased refining capacity is beyond nuts. By increasing the opportunity for consumption in a time of soon-to-be-maxxed-out production, the refinery measure would be beyond irrsponsible. It would be criminal neglect of reality.
The solution to several problems is to reduce consumption. Americans think they can go on driving around in huge gas guzzlers and never have to feel the pain. Well, they are wrong, and the day of pain may be a lot closer than they think. $4 and up gasoline is going to cause a plate shift in the landscape out there, and there is absolutely nothing that will prevent it. Not even if you drilled ten ANWRs.
Kimmitt
So what? Drilling in ANWR is inherently wrong?
Nah, it’s a bad risk. We give up something we know we have and like — a pristine wilderness — in favor of drilling which will not solve our problems (though I grant it could be a miniscule part of a larger solution). So drilling in ANWR has no upside outside of the context of a comprehensive energy plan, other than as a giveaway to oil donors.
Kimmitt
And yeah, there are people who are massively against nuclear power. That’s why a good compromise would be to do the noncontroversial parts of the above, followed by a discussion where the lefties allow some drilling in ANWR and the righties stop pushing nuclear power as the end-all and be-all of our energy program.
John Cole
That’s why a good compromise would be to do the noncontroversial parts of the above, followed by a discussion where the lefties allow some drilling in ANWR and the righties stop pushing nuclear power as the end-all and be-all of our energy program.
If Republicans agree to that compromise, they need their heads examined.
A.) ANWR is no longer a bargaining chip- it is going to happen.
B.) Republicans would be stupid to stop promoting nuclear energy programs, because the opposition is so vocal and organized. Similarly, nuclear energy plants are safe and are going to be a large part of our future. Environmentalists would be wise to stop the histrionics and the scare tactics and instead work to figure out safe ways to store nuclear waste.
See here about safe nuclear power plants.
KC
I worked for the Sacramento Municipal Utility District as an intern in college. They ran the famous Rancho Seco nuclear power plant. It was poorly designed (no redundancy), poorly managed (lots of ugly stories still floating around at SMUD), and was shut down by the voters in the 80s as a result. Rancho Seco became a poster child for problems in the nuclear industry, and perhaps, rightfully so. We definitely need more nuclear energy, but we also need to ensure that what happened in Sacramento doesn’t happen elsewhere.
John Cole
KC- Click the link above for an example of how far nuclear power plantrs have come in the past few decades. I don’t want a Rancho Seco, either, but that is not what we are talking about.
One of the things about the nuclear debate is that they pick poster childs- like Three Mile ISland or Chernobyl, and it drives me nuts.
A.) Three Mile Island, in some aspects, was a smashing success. It worked- we didn;t have a Chernobyl style release.
B.) I don’t know of anyone who is proposing putting a Chernobyl style Soviet reactor from the 1970’s anywhere in world, let alone the UNited States.
The idiots are firmly in control of the debate on nuclear power, and need to be beaten back. It is safe (as safe as anything can be), efficient, and much better for the environment than coal and other fossil fuels.
JKC
I agree with John here: it’s time to take another look at nuclear energy. My only wish is that we have a frank, grown-up discussion about waste disposal at the same time. Oil, quite frankly, is too valuable to burn.
John "Akatsukami" Braue
Conservation to what end, Randolph?
KC
100% agreement John. I didn’t mean to suggest that every new nuclear power plant should have a poster of Rancho Seco planted on its front gates or be compared to it. As I noted in my post on Yucca Mountain, I experienced the wrath of an anti-nuclear absolutist who was generally disinterested in facts. People like him are irrational kooks who are unwilling to consider the positives of nuclear power.
Honestly though, as I mentioned above, people like my father need to accept some facts too. Namely, that unless we’re planning on spending more and more money on fossile fuels, we’re going to have to consider alternative methods of energy development and conservation. Trust me, he becomes just as irrational as any anti-nuclear activist if you say something to him about cafe standards or alternative forms of energy production.
That’s why I think your post on hits the right note. In it are policies that can satisfy most people’s partisan interests, aside from outright absolutists. I don’t like drilling in sensitive areas, but I’m willing to go along with it if it’s coupled with sensible investment in alternative energy development and conservation. Likewise with nuclear power. I bet many Americans would be willing to make similar compromises.
However, beyond satisfying partisan interests, the policy prescriptions you enumerate in your post are things our country basically has to do, and will do, given the proper impetus.
Kimmitt
Similarly, nuclear energy plants are safe and are going to be a large part of our future.
It’s not safety, but cost and disposal which are the issue. The high-level waste is a problem, but the mind-bogglingly large amounts of low-level waste are a tremendous environmental issue. Environmentalists tend to worry about safety and go apoplectic about waste disposal.
In addition, a Democratic President/Congress could easily tie ANWR up in red tape such that it was techinically open but feasibly completely closed. Much better to just have everyone (at least grudgingly) on board, rather than shoving it down the throats of those opposed.
dhw
Two things:
1) ezra has a pretty clear response to this, along the lines of what’s in the comments above.
2) “The only arguments against CAFE standards that hold any water to me are the libertarian ones, and I simply reject those.
Why? Because I can.”
I use four wotds: “Tragedy of the Commons”. But your way is 25% shorter.
-dhw
Toren
Jeez.
I worked in the Canadian oil patch for 7 years, and still have good friends there. Industry belief based on known data says that the ANWR drilling could produce 30 years worth of Prudhoe Bay-level flow. That ain’t hay. And since no exploration has been done in much of that area, and what was done was conducted 30 or more years ago with primitive tech, it might very well prove to have even vastly larger reserves. That’s why people want to, y’know, “explore it.”
As for destroying the pristine wilderness…gag. The drilling area is a fly-blown wasteland.
1. Size of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: 19 million acres (100%)
2. Area closed forever to drilling: 17.5 million acres (92.1%)
3. Coastal area within which exploration is proposed: 1.5 million acres (7.9%)
4. Maximum total area allowed for drilling activities: Two thousand acres (0.01%)
5. Actual drilling footprint: Four hundred acres max (little teeny %)
Toren
And regarding nuclear power…I have a still-relevant rant here.
Some clips:
“Low level waste doesn’t matter. It generally consists of things like used booties and such and you could pick it up with your bare hands. Wear rubber gloves if you’re squeamish. High level waste would come only from the reprocessing plant. ”
“Within twelve years, the vitrified [high level] waste is less radioactive than nuclear fuel. In thirty years it is less poisonous than arsenic trioxide, commonly used as a pesticide. Yes, it would remain detectibly radioactive for a long, long time, but at very low levels. Highly radioactive substances “burn out” fast, like a napalm fire compared to rusting iron–both are oxidization, but which would you rather have in your hand?”
“Know-nothing envirokooks blabber about how this stuff will still be dangerous in 100,000 years. Well, yeah, if someone hits you on the head with a big chunk of it. In fact, within 300 years it is less radioactive than natural uranium ore.
And by the way, the total amount of high-level waste produced in a year by a typical 40 megawatt nuclear power plant would fit in the bed of a 1/2 ton pickup.
Nuclear waste is a non-issue and always has been.”
ppgaz
Not that anyone gives a gnat’s behind, but I am a Blue Dog Dem who strongly supports nuclear power. I don’t think it’s a panacea, but it just makes sense.
As for disposal of waste … God gave us the gift of Nevada ;-)
Paul
Toren,
Thanks for the FACTUAL information, although it is wasted on the brain dead leftists posting here. For example the idiot who actually suggests oil companies are so business unsavvy as to invest untold amounts of money in an infrastructure that will produce oil for a piddling six months. In fact the median estimates are for 20-30 years at 70%-90% of the amount we currently import from Saudi Arabia. Let’s see…oil from American territory, or the home of Wahabiism and the 911 hijackers. Hmmm. Tough choice. For a lefty.
Also bear in mind there are enormous untapped sources for oil and gas under the oceans and at a certain price point it will be profitable to invest in the technology to exploit them. We are nowhere near the point of exhausting the world’s oil reserves.
CAFE standards and conservation are commendable. Economy wrecking “solutions” to agit prop driven imagined catastrophes promulgated by anti-Western Pomo-Tranzies and their hordes of Capitalist teat-suckling useful idiots are, on the other hand, criminal.
JKC
Any chance of getting some of whatever you’re addicted to for our next liberal bacchanalia, Paul? That’s some strange trip you’re on…
Dave Roberts
ANWR is a distraction. Even the oil companies themselves aren’t particularly interested in it. And regardless, even if drills go in, the oil is likely to be exported anyway, doing little to nothing to ameliorate our energy woes.
Conservatives seem hell-bent on getting into ANWR mainly because liberals seem hell-bent on stopping them. But that’s not a very good reason.
As for the rest of your ideas, well, I wish you were in charge of your party. For whatever reason, the Republican Party has demonized environmentalists along with all the other groups it’s demonized in the last couple decades, so it can’t very well publicly adopt “their” solutions.
Paul
JKC: You can start with the Kyoto Protocol, junk science driven catastrophic anthropogenic global warming theory and the steps the left seeks to undertake to prevent it, the Donks refusal to build nuclear reactors, refusal to build refineries, refusal to build electrical power plants, refusal to allow drilling in ANWR and offshore, refusal to thin our forests or sensibly harvest timber, instead letting burn up in unnaturally hot crowning fires while we pay extra to import lumber from countries that clearcut, and on and on.
Of course you can tally up the whole litany of leftist chicken little-isms of recent times: The brutal Afghan winter= quagmire=Vietnam. The Afghans beat the British and the Soviets, so how can we expect to win=quagmire=Viet Nam. The failed Iraq campaign..sandstorms=quagmire=Viet Nam, Baghdad=Stalingrad=quagmire=Viet Nam, the occupation=quagmire=Viet Nam. 500,00 dead innocent civilians. Millions of refugees. The Arab street will boil over, the oilfields will all burn and cause an ecological disaster.
Elections will never take place successfully in Afghanistan or Iraq, Civil war is inevitable. We
Kimmitt
Let’s see…oil from American territory, or the home of Wahabiism and the 911 hijackers. Hmmm. Tough choice. For a lefty.
Dude, that almost makes sense. We don’t import a lot of oil from the Persian Gulf, but it is still vitally important, because the price of oil is globally determined. The point of reducing dependence on foreign oil is to get ourselves to the point where a spike in oil prices will help our Texans as much as will hurt the rest of the economy, so it’ll balance out.
It’s also to reduce worldwide demand for oil, so as to kick a leg of funding out from under the Saudi, Nigerian, and even Venezuelan regimes.
odograph
I’m one of those who would take your list, as a package, but I’m skeptical that we can get there … when we break out as hot buttons things like ANWR.
My ANWR position has always been that we don’t need to argue. Americans ARE going to drill it, it is just a question of whether we do it now, or our children do it later.
The fact that we do it, essentially as our first step in a new energy plan, seems at a minimum to be greedy.
Congress didn’t expand or reinforce CAFE. They JUST started ANWR drilling.
It really seems that we don’t have the political will to do anything other than burn oil as fast as we can (including ANWR oil).
Brian C.B.
For those not distracted by Paul’s War on Straw episode above, a guest poster at Mark Kleiman’s site had a sober rundown of the current Bush energy policy, suggesting that business principles drive a refusal to invest refineries, more of which would lead to greater gasoline use and more global warming (I note here the Thursday NASA release of more conclusive proof of the phenomenon and its artificial source) and lessen not a bit our dependence on foreign oil, since that’s the stuff that the new refineries would be processing. The American nuclear industry needs significant subsidy or enormously higher natural gas and coal prices (not going to happen without changes in regulation) in order to overcome the cost of, essentially, rebuilding itself and getting out the first few new-generation reactors.
BTW, the poster up above is right about any effect of ANWR oil on world prices. Oil is global commodity, and comparisons between that oil in ANWR and how much we (in the USA) buy from the Middle East are disengenuous. If Middle Eastern oil dried up tomorrow, the effect on us wouldn’t be the loss of that small part of our oil we get from Saudi Arabia. It would be the fact that Europe and Japan would suddenly be bidding for Venezualan and Mexican crude. ANWR wouldn’t do much to mitigate the catastrophe, unless ANWR’s output was directed away from the global commodity pool and toward domestic consumption. This government action would have the obvious effect of directing that the oil be sold at below-market rates, something that I’m guessing ANWR’s investors would fight tooth and claw.
Click on the URL for the Kleiman post.
Brian C.B.
Okay, there is no URL button and the comments won’t let me post a link from “tinyurl” and Mark Kleiman’s permalink is too long. Go to http://www.markakleiman.com and down to the 28 April posts. Sorry.
Christie S.
Guess my opposition to ANWR is rooted in growning up in my birth state of Alaska. I’ve seen what happened at Prudhoe and other Alaskan sites.
The government lies when they say they keep the area clean and it won’t hurt the environment. The oil companies lie…repeatedly.
Plain and simple. Until I actually see the government of any Administration actually keep its word on these kinds of things AND force the oil companies to keep theirs, I don’t want them in any of our few remaining national wildlife preserves.
Just my opinion.
Toren
I didn’t work at PB, but staged through there several times. It’s a speck in the wilderness: according to Greenpeace, the total “affected area” is 350 square miles. Alaska is 656,425 sq. mi., making the worst-case footprint for Prudhoe 0.05% of Alaska. (The caribou love PB, by the way–the herds there are the largest in the area.)
We’ve learned a lot about “eco-aware” petro recovery since PB, which is why the ANWR drilling would have only a fraction of the footprint of PB.
Kimmitt
True, but that tundra up there is extremely fragile. One big spill, and you’re going to do a very large amount of damage.
odograph
A cycnic might think ANWR is in the bill because it is good argument-fodder for the bloggers.
Takes their eyes off the short term plans … what were the short term plans again?
Randolph Fritz
“Conservation to what end, Randolph?”
Frugality and the fertility of the Earth; the ends of making the best use of our sustainable energy resources and the preservation of the ecosystems of the earth.
I thought frugality and fertility were conservative values.
odograph
I thought frugality and fertility were conservative values.
Me too. I’m conservative in philosophy and in personal finance. I think the fact that I’d tend to keep some of my money in reserve is one reason I’d want us to keep some reasonable amount of our oil in reserve. The “strategic” reserve is a pretty trivial amount.
But when we look at it, most people don’t keep money in reserve. Indeed, the fact that most people live in increasing debt is one reason why they don’t panic at a government that live in increasing debt. That short term thinking might also be why they want to “burn” ANWR now.
J Caesar
Out of curiousity.
What is Toren’s qualifications for giving us “factual” information on nuclear waste? I’d actually love to believe him as I am a proponent for Nuclear Energy… but I’ve noticed a tendency in the conservative blogosphere for people to believe as facts bullshit that people simply made up.
I’d like to cross reference this against verifiable sources.
Toren
Your Google button broken, J Caesar? Cross-ref away.
If you find errors in my post on nuc waste email me directly and I’ll add the corrections to my site, just as I did when J Bowen (a real-life nuclear engineer) caught me on the 40MW error. I will note he didn’t find any other errors.
I try to be as accurate as I can when posting–as they say, on the internet nobody knows you’re a dog, but they DO know when you’re full of shit.
Kimmitt
The Afghans beat the British and the Soviets, so how can we expect to win=quagmire=Viet Nam.
Um, didn’t the US implicitly acknowledge this when we handled the Afghan intervention in a very different fashion from how the Brits and Soviets invaded Afghanistan? That is, didn’t we all agree on the problem and wasn’t one of the Bush Administration’s few policy bright spots its success in taking it on?
wild bird
the enviromentalists wackos are claiming that ANWR is a prestine fragile enviroment hog wash these eco-freaks will say anything to stop the drilling and keep us paying $3 to $4 a gallon for gas and blathering about riding bikes,mass transit or somthing else frrankly all the idiots in hollywood who give money to the eco-freaks should walk to the eco weirdos places and stop driving in the limos and its time for the eco leaders to stop being such jerks
likwidshoe
Let me break down the comments here.
The conservatives say – drill, build more refineries, build nuclear plants, work on technology.
The liberals say – no, no, “global warming” (which isn’t even close to being proven), no, no, no, don’t build anything, let’s put all of our eggs in one basket. The basket is technology that isn’t here yet.
Hmmm….tough choice there.