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| 11/22 |
| 2005/12/21-23 [Politics/Domestic/California, Science/GlobalWarming] UID:41108 Activity:high |
12/21 http://www.michnews.com/artman/publish/article_10975.shtml The Native Americans who live in ANWR want drilling there. And it's supposed to be their land. \_ And if our history's taught us anything, it's that the Native Americans make excellent choices about what to do w/ their land. \_ Uh? What? When or how exactly uh... wtf are you talking about? \_ He's probably talking about Indian Gaming. \_ Then he has no idea what he's talking about. \_ You misspelled "Some of the Native Americans." There are two tribes there, one of which initially opposed drilling and now supports it, and one of which still opposes it. -tom \- in general i think a lot of liberals are cowed by conservatives saying "are you saying group X is stupid and doesnt know what is in their own best interests?" ... i think liberals would often be wise not to fall for this and say "yes, people do often make dumb decisions for themselves either via ignorance or weakness or lazyness etc". \_ Exactly why direct democracy initiatives in California are such a failure. \- well i think there are other factors at play there [single issue voters, persistent, disinformation etc] but i dont have time to write more about that now.--psb \_ how are they a failure? however in this case there is another argument which is the dilution factor. the benefits of ANWR drilling "amortized" over everone in the US is trivial but if the locals [indians or alaskans] are bought off [which they are] then even if it is "in their backyard" [so maybe they pay 10x the "cost"] it may make sense to be in favor since they may reap 100x the benefits. if there were a national referendum on ANWR drilling how much would you ell your vote for? $25? (my personal position on ANWR has more to do with the terms of selling national endowments to private interests rather than "oooh, nature must not be harmed." so i think about it in the same way as water subsidies to farmers or western grazing rights to Big Cattle, or how mining rights are granted, frequency auctions etc.) --psb \_ Oh, you mean the Gwich'in? They can drill on other parts of their land and have nice checks rolling in that the Inupiat don't. \_ As far as state politics goes, part of the point here is that *everyone* who lives in Alaska has checks rolling in every year from oil money(actually interest on money set aside in the 70's oil boom). The majority of Alaskans of all races are in favor of drilling for that reason. Alaskans who are willing to go against their economic interests on this issue are a few local natives, and the liberal population who mostly live in Juneau, Anchorage, and a few hippie towns on the Kenai peninsula. I should probably mention that I'm from Juneau and oppose drilling, although my personal reasons are closer to psb's than to that of the typical environmentalist. \_ How big are the checks? It can't be that much. Does everyone who lives there qualify? \_ It's about a grand a year for every man, woman, and child. So for a big family living out in the bush, that can make a big difference. And don't forget there are no state sales or income taxes, and they want to keep it that way. One thing I've wondered about is whether it's more profitable in the long run to pump out the oil, sell it, put the money in a fund(they call it the PFD) and invest that fund as they have done, or to leave it there until the price goes crazy, *then* pump it. \_ thanks, that's what I was looking for. \- two things: 1. the issue is the marginal increase in the checks if ANWR drilling foes through, not the absolute size of the checks 1. the issue is the marginal increase in the checks (benefits) if ANWR drilling foes through, not the absolute size of the checks(benefits). 2. the benefits are not just caputured by the size of the checks ... you also have to factor in perhaps higher level of state services provided, what the state taxes would be otherwise etc. the state taxes would be otherwise i.e. paying $10k in state taxes and getting a fund check for $12k vs having no state taxes and getting a check for $2k. \_ I know someone who lived up in the ANWR area, teaching in one of the villages. My impression from him is that both the native and white local population are bitterly divided over the issue. I think he said that both natives and whites are sort of 50/50. \_ Nice overwrite dumbass. \_ Did you read George Will's awesome editorial saying that we should all be for drilling in ANWR because environmentalism == Communism? - danh \_ No, but I doubt anyone would say, "We should drill in XYZ because otherwise the communist will win!" as you describe it. \_ George Will wrote an editorial saying, "We must drill or the communists will win!"? Unlikely. \_ http://tinyurl.com/csqgr - danh \_ the bigger issue is energy independence. I remember American Science Foundation had a study saying that if we increase our automobile's fuel efficiency by 15%, we would save twice as much oil as Anwr's reserve in the span of couple years. \_ Why not do both? Conservation alone only delays the inevitable. Conservation by definition doesn't create new sources of anything. So with conservation we push this decision back a few years and then what? Also, you can only eek so much fuel efficiency from a vehicle. There are still some basic physical laws we need to follow re: mass, energy, heat loss, acceleration, etc. \_ In other, totally unrelated, news, congressional budget cuts to lead to layoffs of 100 scientists at the National Renewable Energy Lab http://csua.org/u/een [Rocky Mountain News] "In fiscal 2006, Congress cut the Department of Energy's budget for all renewable energy programs by more than 35 percent." Amazing. \_ Blah, as if they're the only people who got cut. The budget is public. Go see who else got cut to ribbons. \_ Posting again because someone didn't like reality: All sorts of DOE budgets got cut. The budget is public. Go look up who else got axed. The RE guys weren't a special target like you imply. \_ I implied nothing of the kind. \_ Then there should be nothing amazing about some particular program getting a cut. \_ Really? And if it were the Marine Corps, right before a major ground war, how would you feel then? This is a national security issue. \_ Uh oh, you're not about to go off about the Peak Oil thing, are you? \_ I implied nothing of the kind, you fucking twat. What would your reaction be if they laid off, say, ten percent of the senior officers in the Marine Corps right now? This is a national security issue, and congress just doesn't seem to get that. And why should they, when their job is to represent morons like you? \_ PEEK OIL!!!!!1!1!!! |
| 11/22 |
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| www.michnews.com/artman/publish/article_10975.shtml com Dec 21, 2005 People need to tell their Senators: Vote for drilling in ANWR If you listened only to the news media and environmentalists, youd think the debate over oil development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge w as about caribou and ecology. It is about Alaskan Natives rights of self-determinat ion our right to decide how our own lands and resources will be used. Ab out whether the United States will honor its agreements with Natives who ceded their claim to vast ancestral lands and resources, in exchange fo r the right to determine our destiny on the lands we retained or so we w ere told. Its about whether senators, congressmen, pressure groups and other people who live hundreds or even thousands of miles from our lands will have t he right to dictate our future. Anyone who professes to respect Native rights, civil rights, human rights and property rights has only one choice in this matter. They must suppo rt what Native Americans who live in ANWR overwhelmingly want: drilling in accord with guidelines that we will negotiate ourselves. Anything less is cultural and environmental imperialism. It is stealing o ur Native lands, resources and futures. It will keep our people on the e dge of poverty forever. Beyond the little houses, there is flat frozen ocean and tundra for as far as the eye can see. Stretching 1000 miles from the Barents Sea near Siberia in the wes t, to the Canadian border in the east, the Arctic Coastal Plain is one o f the harshest climates in the world. The PURE LUXURY of running water, flush toilets, local schools, local hea lth care clinics, police and fire stations, were unavailable prior to th e discovery of oil at Prudhoe Bay, Americas largest oil field, 90 miles to the west. Kaktovik was the last community on Alaskas North Slope to get these wondrous things, courtesy of tax revenue from oil operations a t Prudhoe Bay. What would Americans in the Lower 48 States do if they were denied these basic necessities? Yet these are the basic amenities that radical environmentalists of the S ierra Club and Wilderness Society say the Inupiat Eskimo people should b e denied. They are funded quite lavishly by green groups for opposing oil de velopment on Inuit lands even as they leased and drilled for oil on thei r own tribal lands, in the middle of caribou migration areas. But for op posing oil development on Inuit lands, the Gwichin have become the poste r children for the anti-drilling movement. Even worse, many members of Congress also want to deny the Inupiat people of ANWR one of the most basic principles of our society: the right to o wn, control and use our private property. My Inupiat Eskimo people are freezing in the dark, and with one breath me mbers of Congress are preventing them from developing oil and gas on our own private lands in ANWR. With the next breath, they are pleading for gas and heating oil subsidies for their constituents. The Inupiat Eskimo people are subsistence hunters, says Jacob Adams, pres ident of the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation. Based on close personal experience, we know we can have carefully regulated oil exploration and development in the Coastal Plain study area. We can preserve the environ ment and wildlife resources of ANWR and still provide economic and energ y security benefits to our people and the Nation. Congress created and set aside the Coastal Plain specifically for oil and gas exploration to compensate the Inuit for having given up rights to t heir other ancestral lands, and as a compromise for designating other Al askan lands as wilderness. The 15-million-acre is larger than Delaware, in a refuge the size of South Carolina. But Kaktoviks 92,000 acres of p rivate land have been trapped, locked up and made untouchable by crass p olitical forces, because it lies with the borders of ANWR. Any oil or land development here can take place only with Congressional a pproval. The Native people of Kaktovik overwhelmingly support drilling. We know the tax revenues from oil exploration on our land will fund our basic utilities, educate our children, and preserve our culture and heri tage. But our rights and wishes are being trampled under foot for no good reaso n In 1970, when oil development was first proposed at Prudhoe Bay, my peopl e in the Arctic Native community were understandably concerned and hesit ant about our future and the effect of development our homelands. To meet these concerns and challenges, and ensure the preservation of Nat ive lands and heritage, Inupiat leaders, the Alaskan government, oil ind ustry and federal government have managed a symbiotic, rational and succ essful relationship. Indeed, the operations here are easily the most com munity involved, environmentally strict and technologically advanced any where in the world. During three decades of oil development, 3 ,000 caribou have turned into 32,000. Not a single species of animal, fi sh, bird or insect has declined even a fraction. Neighboring Native communities have thrived, and cu ltures have been preserved and promoted. And many Native Alaskans have p rofessional jobs in the oil industry. Even the hypocritical Gwichin who want to stop all development in ANWR op erate Gwichin Ensign Oilfield Services, Mackenzie Aboriginal Corporation , Mackenzie Valley Construction, Camp MGK, Gwichin Helicopters and Inuvi k Commercial Properties. Every one is directly involved in oil field ser vices and contracts. They enable Gwichin men and women to return to nice homes with decent paychecks and the satisfaction that comes from being involved in managing their own land for the benefit of their families an d people. That is why Kaktovik vice mayor the late Herman Aishanna said: The strang e people who want to call our country wilderness, to deny that we even e xist these people insult us. We know and understand the oil people, an d we can handle them, as we have done for some years now. Former North S lope Borough mayor George Ahmaogak and the vast majority of all our peop le echo these sentiments. This shameful, unconscionab le treatment of Alaskas Native People in the name of protecting lands th at are in no danger must end. We urge all decent Americans to call their senators and congressmen, and tell them to vote for drilling in ANWR. And it will provide jobs, revenues and energy for Natives and non-Nativ es alike. Copyright by Tara Sweeney Tara Sweeney is an Inupiaq from Barrow, Alaska. Site Meter Matt C Abbott Chris G Adamo Felicia Benamon James A Bowden Alan Caruba Tom DeWeese AJ DiCintio Lee Ellis Michael J Gaynor Diane M Grassi I rwin N Graulich Jane Jimenez Kevin D Korenthal Jim Kouri Rachel Neuwir th Daneen G Peterson Doug Schmitz Barbara J Stock J Grant Swank, Jr. |
| tinyurl.com/csqgr -> www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/14/AR2005121401933.html Our Fake Drilling Debate Collectively Hiding Behind ANWR By George F Will Thursday, December 15, 2005; Page A33 In 1986 Gale Norton was 32 and working for the secretary of the interior on matters pertaining to the proposal to open a small portion of the Arc tic National Wildlife Refuge -- area 1002 -- to drilling for oil and nat ural gas, a proposal that then had already been a bone of contention for several years. Today Norton is the secretary of the interior and is wor king on opening ANWR. But this interminable argument actually could end soon with Congress auth orizing drilling. That would be good for energy policy and excellent for the nation's governance. Jim Hoagland | Except for Iraq's elections and its constitutional refer endum, this has been a lost year for Bush. The president flailed, stumbl ed or simply disappeared when the going got tough at home. Area 1002 is 15 million of the refuge's 19 million acres. In 1980 a Demo cratically controlled Congress, at the behest of President Jimmy Carter, set area 1002 aside for possible energy exploration. Since then, althou gh there are active oil and gas wells in at least 36 US wildlife refug es, stopping drilling in ANWR has become sacramental for environmentalis ts who speak about it the way Wordsworth wrote about the Lake Country. Few opponents of energy development in what they call "pristine" ANWR hav e visited it. Those who have and who think it is "pristine" must have vi sited during the 56 days a year when it is without sunlight. They missed the roads, stores, houses, military installations, airstrip and school. Opponents worry that the caribou will be disconsolate about, and their re production disrupted by, this intrusion by man. The same was said 30 yea rs ago by opponents of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, which brings heated oi l south from Prudhoe Bay. Since the oil began flowing, the caribou have increased from 5,000 to 31,000. Ice roads and helicopter pads, which will melt each spring, will minimize man's footprint, which will be on a 2,000-acre plot about one-fifth the size of Dulles Airport. Nevertheless, opponents say the environmental c ost is too high for what the ineffable John Kerry calls "a few drops of oil." Flowing at 1 million barrels a day -- equal to 20 percent of today's dome stic oil production -- ANWR oil would almost equal America's daily impor ts from Saudi Arabia. And it would equal the supply loss that Hurricane Katrina temporarily caused, and that caused so much histrionic distress among consumers. Lee Raymond, chairman and CEO of Exxon Mobil, says that if the major oil companies decided that 10 billion barrels were an amou nt too small to justify exploration and development projects, many curre nt and future projects around the world would be abandoned. But for many opponents of drilling in the refuge, the debate is only seco ndarily about energy and the environment. Rather, it is a disguised deba te about elemental political matters. For some people, environmentalism is collectivism in drag. Such people us e environmental causes and rhetoric not to change the political climate for the purpose of environmental improvement. Rather, for them, changing the society's politics is the end, and environmental policies are mere means to that end. The unending argument in political philosophy concerns constantly adjusti ng society's balance between freedom and equality. The primary goal of c ollectivism -- of socialism in Europe and contemporary liberalism in Ame rica -- is to enlarge governmental supervision of individuals' lives. People are to be conscripted into one large cohort, everyone equal (altho ugh not equal in status or power to the governing class) in their status as wards of a self-aggrandizing government. Government says the constan t enlargement of its supervising power is necessary for the equitable or efficient allocation of scarce resources. Therefore, one of the collectivists' tactics is to produce scarcities, pa rticularly of what makes modern society modern -- the energy requisite f or social dynamism and individual autonomy. Hence collectivists use envi ronmentalism to advance a collectivizing energy policy. Focusing on one energy source at a time, they stress the environmental hazards of findin g, developing, transporting, manufacturing or using oil, natural gas, co al or nuclear power. A quarter of a century of this tactic applied to ANWR is about 24 years t oo many. If geologists were to decide that there were only three thimble s of oil beneath area 1002, there would still be something to be said fo r going down to get them, just to prove that this nation cannot be forev er paralyzed by people wielding environmentalism as a cover for collecti vism. |
| csua.org/u/een -> www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/energy/article/0,2777,DRMN_23914_4328252,00.html Print By Gargi Chakrabarty, Rocky Mountain News December 20, 2005 The National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden plans to lay off as ma ny as 100 scientists and researchers, or 11 percent of its total staff, beginning early next month as it faces drastic cuts in its budget. The fiscal 2006 cuts, estimated at more than $20 million, or 10 percent o f its $200 million budget in fiscal 2005, are the result of Congress ear marking or diverting a big chunk of federal funds toward other projects. In fiscal 2006, Congress cut the Department of Energy's budget for all re newable energy programs by more than 35 percent. As a result, DOE, which funds NREL as well as other national labs, has cut the total amount it will give the lab in Golden. NREL does research in wind, biomass, solar and hydrogen technologies. "We are going to face a very difficult year at NREL," said Bob Noun, NREL 's deputy associate director. "At a time in which renewable energy enjoys significant bipartisan suppor t in Congress, that very support has spawned all of these projects aroun d the country that have diverted funds from NREL's research programs." And in a bipartisan move, Colorado's congressional delegation, including Democrats Sen. Bob B eauprez, have criticized the cuts and are pressing the DOE to find ways to minimize the impact on NREL. "We are hearing there could possibly be as many as 100 people laid off," said Beauprez press secretary Jordan Stoick. "Congressman Beauprez is very concerned about the potential impact on NRE L and has contacted officials at DOE to remind them of the importance of NREL not only to the local economy but also to our country's energy nee ds, especially at a time when we need to do everything we can to help de velop alternative sources of energy," Stoick said. NREL's staff reduction, to begin early next year, would be the third larg est in its 28-year history. The largest reduction was in 1981, when NREL laid off nearly half its sta ff, or 500, under the Reagan administration. The second largest was under the Clinton administration in 1996, when the lab laid off 225 employees. "Clearly, laying off 100 employees will affect the morale and affect the product, which in NREL's case is research and development and outreach," Udall said. "Cutting more than 10 percent of the staff out of the blue, especially at a place as lean as NREL, will have a detrimental effect o n our goal of becoming energy independent." Udall said he and Beauprez were not in the conference room when various m embers of Congress added the fund appropriations to the final bill in th e House, thereby crowding out funding for the NREL programs. Udall said he and Beauprez are calling DOE officials and looking at other sources of funds to cover NREL's budget shortfall. In an e-mail statement, Salazar said: "(Monday's) news of budget cuts at NREL is disturbing, and I will continue to work with my colleagues on th e Senate Budget and Appropriations Committees to restore and bolster NRE L's funding." The DOE is working with NREL management on the budget issue. Noun said that the lab, which gets almost all of its funding from just on e DOE program - Energy Efficiency Renewable Energy - is discussing fundi ng from other programs with the DOE. "We at the DOE are actively engaged in balancing Congress' priorities wit h ongoing research activities at NREL," said DOE spokesman Mike Waldron. "It is likely, however, some positions will be affected. But at this po int we are in the process of evaluating the impact of congressionally di rected projects both on jobs and research areas." |