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WORLDWIDE
FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS
Gas
Price Increases Lead to Calls to Open Up American Wilderness
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Forest Networking a Project of Forests.org
http://forests.org/ -- Forest
Conservation Archives
http://forests.org/web/ -- Discuss Forest
Conservation
3/12/00
OVERVIEW
& COMMENTARY
Due to
recent increases in gasoline prices in the United States,
there
are calls to open Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to
oil
drilling--a huge wilderness area full of caribou, polar bears,
swans,
snow geese, musk oxen and many other species, that has been
called
"America's Serengeti". This
is a shockingly stupid policy
proposal. American gas prices while increasing, are
still less than
half of
what most of the rest of the world pays, and have held steady
in real
terms for over 25 years. Oil should be
expensive to cover
its
costs to the environment and to spur alternatives. It is
criminal
that slight cost increases for oil should lead to loss of
some of
the last wilderness in America. Few new
wildernesses are
being
made currently, and under no circumstances should those
remaining
be sacrificed for a few more years of gluttonous, under
priced,
polluting fossil fuel consumption. The
"Climate Ark" at
http://www.climateark.org/
has many resources on climate change, and
how
fossil fuels and inappropriate land use are causing the problem.
Shame
on those in America that call on everyone else to save their
natural
ecosystems and wildernesses, while proposing to liquidate
their
own to save a few cents at the gasoline pump.
g.b.
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TEXT STARTS HERE:
Title: Gas prices fuel drilling, tax debates
Some want to drill in protected
areas, others see
alternatives
Source: MSNBC
Status: Copyright 2000, contact source for
permission to reprint
Date: March 9, 2000
Byline: Miguel Llanos
Alaska's
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge covers 19 million acres. Part
of its
coastal plain, seen here, would be open to oil drilling under a
new
Senate bill.
March 9
- At what price are Americans willing
to open some of the
nation's
last pristine wilderness to oil drilling? Some senators think
it's
the $1.50 a gallon many motorists are paying for unleaded, and
they
are pushing legislation to drill in Alaska's Arctic National
Wildlife
Refuge. Environmentalists aren't happy, and neither is the
Clinton
administration, which suggested the president would veto the
bill if
it reached him.
"HOMEOWNERS
ARE STRUGGLING to pay their heating oil bills, truckers
are
fighting to stay in business and motorists this spring may well be
boiling
over prices at the pump," Senate Energy Committee Chairman
Frank
Murkowski said at a news conference Wednesday to unveil the
legislation.
"We are going to continue on this rollercoaster of price
shocks
and economic disruption until we learn from our mistakes and
take
action to produce more energy here at home."
Murkowski
proposed suspending 4.3 cents per gallon of the federal
gasoline
tax to ease the pain of the soaring prices.
Congress
narrowly approved a 4.3 cent increase in 1993 as part of the
Clinton
administration's budget deficit reduction plan. Republicans
staunchly
opposed the increase. Murkowski's measure would suspend it
until
the end of the year.
House
and Senate tax writing committees were cool to the idea, but a
number
of Republican senators said the proposal might gain momentum if
prices
at the pump, now at more than $1.50 a gallon in many places,
continue
to climb.
ARGUMENTS
FOR
The
entire refuge is spread over 19 million acres of Alaska's North
Slope,
95 percent of which is already available for oil and gas
drilling.
The
U.S. Geological Survey has estimated the coastal plain could
contain
from 5.7 billion to 16 billion barrels of oil. Even if
drilling
was approved, it could take a decade before production
begins.
Murkowski
said his legislation would allow oil development on only a
small
part of the 1.5-million-acre coastal plain. Even if only 7
billion
barrels were produced, he argued, that's the equivalent of 30
years'
worth of oil imports from Saudi Arabia.
Murkowski
said that drilling is less of an environmental risk than
importing
oil, because the latter entails supertankers and the
possibility
of oil spills.
Sen.
Phil Gramm, R-Texas, ridiculed Energy Secretary Bill Richardson's
recent
overseas trip to persuade OPEC oil producers to raise
production.
"We've seen this administration in the unseemly process of
traveling
the world begging oil producers to increase production," he
said.
"Our point is we need to start at home producing more oil and
gas in
America."
Murkowski
noted that U.S. oil production has fallen 17 percent during
the
Clinton administration, while consumption has risen by 14 percent.
It's
time to open more U.S. areas to exploration, he argued, not just
in
Alaska but in other Western states and offshore along the outer
continental
shelf.
His
bill is co-sponsored by Sen. Ted Stevens, also an Alaskan
Republican,
and 31 other senators, including three Democrats.
ADMINISTRATION
DRAWS LINE
Congress
approved legislation to allow oil development on the coastal
plain
in 1995. But President Clinton vetoed that measure as part of a
broader
budget package, and Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt suggested
Wednesday
he'd do so again.
"We've
made it clear again and again," Babbitt said in a statement.
"We
will protect this last undeveloped fragment of America' arctic
coastline
for the thousands of caribou, polar bears, swans, snow
geese,
musk oxen and countless other species who use it to birth and
shelter
their young."
The
federal government allows "environmentally sensitive" oil
production
in a large part of the National Petroleum Reserve in
Alaska,
Babbitt said. But there is a big difference between that and
allowing
oil exploration in a National Wildlife Refuge, he said.
ENVIRONMENTALISTS
ANGRY
The
legislation also drew negative reviews from environmental groups,
who
have long fought to keep oil companies out of the refuge.
The
Sierra Club accused Murkowski of potentially destroying "America's
Serengeti,"
while resisting efforts to raise automobile fuel
efficiency
standards and other "common sense" measures to lower oil
prices.
The
Wilderness Society said "this bill isn't about filling America's
fuel
tanks, it's about lining the pockets of special interests in
Alaska."
For
environmentalists, measures to save energy and develop
alternatives
like solar and wind power are better options, especially
given
what's at stake in the Arctic refuge.
"Developing
the arctic refuge," said Allen Smith, the society's Alaska
director,
"would be a senseless act equivalent to burning a painting
by
Picasso to warm yourself."
Activists
are also unhappy about how some drilling has been going in
approved
areas. As part of its "Arctic Action" effort, Greenpeace this
month
set up a base camp near a BP Amoco drilling site to protest the
offshore
project.
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