Marsha's Big Alaskan Adventure
Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn is back from her fact-finding mission to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Here's her report. Marsha stepped out of the plane, looked around and didn't see much. That convinced her that we ought to drill for oil there. Her logic is overwhelming.
“When I went to ANWR I expected to see a pristine wilderness teeming with wildlife who knew that this tiny refuge was their only safe haven. What I discovered was a broad area just a little bit smaller than the state of Tennessee. The nearest mountain is 30 miles away and the closest tree is 70 miles past that. In this vast and desolate landscape, we only need to drill in an area roughly 10% the size of Franklin and 20% of Germantown, TN. That operation would mean as many as 750,000 new American jobs. These are jobs that would otherwise go to oil producing countries like Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, or Russia. I return to Tennessee even more convinced that we need to drill here and drill now.”
Actually, Marsha, there's stuff there in the wildlife refuge. Lots and lots of birds, caribou, polar bears and grizzlies too, wolves, foxes, wolverines, even these bizarre ancient looking creatures called muskoxen. Trust me, Marsha. Wildlife is there. You just didn't happen to see any, but other people have. The Arctic isn't like Brentwood, where the Starbucks and the nail salon and everything is right there within easy driving distance in your SUV. Wildlife is sometimes hard to find. Somebody probably should have explained that to you. But that's OK, you'll know better next time.
Comments
Let me guess, you've never been to ANWR. Note that the report you cite refers to _ALL_ of ANWR, not just the coastal plain where drilling would take place. And here's a column written by an Alaskan writer, the Anchorage Daily News Outdoor editor:
The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is a wild and awe-inspiring landscape relentlessly mischaracterized.
Here is the October issue of Smithsonian magazine: "Though ANWRs coastal plain boasts a dazzling abundance of wildlife -- the largest concentration of land-denning polar bears in Alaska, enormous flocks of migratory birds, wolves, wolverines, musk oxen, Arctic fox and snowy owls -- the caribou remain the symbol of the fight over the refuge."
This theme has become the environmental touchstone for ANWR, and it is a fraud.
ANWR is wild and awe-inspiring not for its abundance of wildlife but for the unsettling scarcity of it, for a biological nonproductivity that is almost otherworldly, for the feeling the plain gives one that here exists the very edge of survival for life as we know it.
Wildlife numbers on the plain are, in reality, so low you can almost count the animals on your fingers and toes.
http://www.adn.com/454/story/129750.html
Posted 08/22/2008 at 11:51:08 AMDammit Jim. Don't try to confuse JW with facts. He's got his mind (what there is of it) made up. Leave him alone curled up in the fetal position whimpering that the world is ending.
Posted 08/22/2008 at 12:16:11 PM"Her logic is overwhelming."
It's sufficient to come to the correct conclusion - drill in ANWAR.
Which is more that I can say for your post which has plenty of smirking but no logic at all.
The environmental wackos predicted that the Alaska pipeline would wipe out the Caribou. In fact the Caribout thrived and the they liked the pipeline. They congrgate around it because of the warmth it gives off.
Furthermore, I doubt that the density of the animal population in the tract of ANWAR in question is any higher than most of the other places in this country where we are have already drilled for oil and gas - in Texas, Lousiana, offshore in the Gulf, etc.
If the prescence of animals wasn't a sufficient reason to preclude drilling in any of those places, it isn't a sufficient one to preclude it in ANWAR either - or anywhere else for that matter.
Posted 08/22/2008 at 12:30:50 PM"When I went to ANWR I expected to see a pristine wilderness teeming with wildlife who knew that this tiny refuge was their only safe haven."
He (remember, it's CongressMAN Blackburn) expected no such thing. What a liar.
Posted 08/22/2008 at 05:14:43 PMHaving moved here from Alaska and having actually been to the coastal plain of ANWR, which I doubt anyone else in this forum has - there is plenty of wildlife on the plain. There is a remarkable amount of beautiful tundra plant life. It is unspoiled and clean.
Many folks in Alaska would sell their school yard for drilling. The entire state economy stays afloat on oil.
I don't want to drill because it's not going to solve our problem. But the folks who make the coastal plain sound like a wasteland are wrong - it is not a wasteland. It is beautiful - not mountains and tress beautiful - but beautiful tundra that is supposed to look exactly like it does as nature intended, not as a flower box or zoo or whatever Blackburn's personal description of what she thinks beauty is to her.
Posted 08/23/2008 at 09:43:57 AMMy family toured Alaska over the summer. We spent 2 weeks in a RV, and we flew over parts of ANWR. We called it, and most of the rest of Alaska's Interior, "the great big empty."
Sure, there's wildlife. Every 100 miles or so we'd see some. A crow here, an arctic squirrel there. We even saw a marmot outside of Denali National Park (where they point out every sparse, faraway creature to anxious visitors with huge binoculars).
But we've been to 25 of the national parks in the Lower 48. Alaska (and particularly the ANWR section) was much worse than Arches or Bryce Canyon, which were the most sparse we've seen in the Lower 48. We were expecting animal density like in the Smokies or Yellowstone, and we got more like the Far Side of the Moon.
The planned "development" that they want to put up in the NE Nowhere is about the same size as a penny on your average SUV. I'm totally in favor of it, having seen it.
Posted 09/22/2008 at 10:08:48 PM