Idiot Wind
Gale Norton is either stupid or she thinks everyone else is. As Secretary of the Interior, her job, part of it, anyway, is to protect the national wilderness areas of the United States. As Secretary of the Interior for the rapacious George W. Bush, her job is to get into the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and drill for oil. Never mind that she is doing so at the behest of two oil magnates now occupying the highest offices in the land for the benefit of Big Oil, according to her, we can get in, extract the oil, and never harm any aspect of the environment. But if you look at her arguments, it’s clear that she has little concept of “ecosystem” beyond plants and dirt. Stupid. The arguments against drilling in the ANWR go far beyond the set-up requirements. Regardless of ice-built roads, helicopters, and computer-assisted drilling decisions, the effect on the environment of oil exploration are potentially immense and well-known. In addition, there are few enough places on earth where we haven’t stuck our footprint, and plenty of other, non-environmental reasons we shouldn’t do it in Alaska anyway. There’s a reason for having a wildlife “refuge” in a wilderness, and drilling for oil doesn’t support it. Foreign oil dependency should move us off oil, not into destroying more of our few remaining wilderness habitats to get only potentially more. This isn’t about not having enough to heat our homes and run our businesses, this is about having enough to run our SUV’s, enough to profligately expend when a little - just a little – conservation would reduce our needs, and more innovation could replace the requirement for oil altogether. Gale Norton is trying to recast the argument in her master’s service, and we’d better not let her get away with it.