Well Thank God For a Republican Senate: ANWAR Drilling Passed

[quote name='elprincipe']I don't feel ANWR drilling is going to ruin very much. It's taking place on a very small area of a gigantic reserve. While I understand the need and desire for conservation, I feel this is just common sense due to a need to also take human needs into account (what a novel idea!).[/QUOTE]

The idea of human needs is interesting. Given what occurs in the third world everyday (that $5 billion Bush promised to help fight AIDS in Africa in 2002/3? Not a dime has been given); given what we ignore everyday (why we haven't tried to oust Robert Mugabe in the name of "spreading democracy" is beyond me, not to mention Sudan, Syria, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, et al.); given the human needs denied in this country in the past five years in favor of corporate profits (perhaps you could explain to me how medicaire was improved by the Bush bill, other than providing a .7 billion dollar profit to pharmaceuticals - how have the people on medicaire been helped?); given the human needs ignored (and continuing to be ignored) both in Iraq and Cuba in our prisons; given the human needs ignored consistently by this administration (Bush's 2005 budget eliminated Pell (?) grants for low-income students to attend vocational school - and these are the very students who require educational assistance more than any other student), I fail to see how supplemental oil is a "human need."

Will we eventually need it? Regrettably, you may be on to something there; until we, as a nation, learn to curb our oil consumption on more general levels (demand higher MPG from companies, demand better/cheaper hybrids, *walk more*), satiating a "need" such as this is directly rewarding United States citizens for consuming resources without regard.

myke.
 
[quote name='elprincipe']I don't feel ANWR drilling is going to ruin very much. It's taking place on a very small area of a gigantic reserve. While I understand the need and desire for conservation, I feel this is just common sense due to a need to also take human needs into account (what a novel idea!).[/QUOTE]

Human need, or corporate greed?
 
http://www.dailycampus.com/news/2005/02/16/Commentary/Alaskan.Drilling.Not.So.Bad-866062.shtml
As far as the impact drilling will have on the local animal population, it is necessary to first examine the effects other Alaskan pipelines have had on the animal life. At the start of the drilling at Purdue Bay the caribou population consisted of 3,000 animals. At the end of the development the population had almost doubled, reaching 5,500 and present-day accounts of the area show that the caribou population has skyrocketed to well over 20,000 animals.
Click to expand...

Guess we gotta stop the drilling, we nature-hating Republicans want all the animals to die and this obviously isn't the way to go about doing it...
 
[quote name='gamefreak']http://www.dailycampus.com/news/2005/02/16/Commentary/Alaskan.Drilling.Not.So.Bad-866062.shtml


Guess we gotta stop the drilling, we nature-hating Republicans want all the animals to die and this obviously isn't the way to go about doing it...[/QUOTE]

Sounds good, but it doesn't really say much. What are the effects on other mammals/birds/fish in the area? Did its predator take a hit? Was this a fluke, or is it normal for animals to flourish when drilling starts? So many questions, so little answers provided.

Suburbs result in booming squirrel, blue jay etc. populations, kill off wolves and other predators and the deer population explodes, cities result in booming rat and pidgeon populations, looking at just one or two animals is not a good indicator.

Though I find that comment to just be taking advantage of the article, most people who want the drilling don't really care whether it harms the wildlife or not. To most if it doesn't that's great, if it does that's fine to.
 
I can't find any information on Purdue Bay as a location in Alaska; the only thing that I google up is the same item posted above. Any help?

Something must have migrated away or died in order to the caribou population to increase like that; the population wouldn't spontaneously bloom like that, and the pipelines sure as shit aren't a causal factor. So, what is the article not telling us?

myke.
 
[quote name='alonzomourning23']But we always push "just a little further" for the sake of human needs. Look at how much we've destroyed so far pushing "just a little bit further". This isn't even like a species where you can devestate their numbers and they can, sometimes, bounce back under the right conditions. Every advance here is permanent, and in a few years they'll move onto their next target, just like they always do.[/QUOTE]

Ah, the slippery slope argument. I don't doubt there will be more areas people want opened up for oil/gas/coal exploration. Why? Because it's necessary at this point in time for our economy.

I should also note that Alaskans and locals overwhelmingly want this drilling to happen, just like the people of Southern Utah really wanted coal development (90%+ in favor according to polls) when Clinton decided that they shouldn't have any say over their own future. People in these areas want jobs and see this kind of development as the way to get them. Regrettably, not everyone can be a movie star in Hollywood or a stock broker on Wall Street. Rural areas have people who want to make a living for themselves as well.

Again, balance is the key here. Just getting more oil only postpones the eventual reckoning when it runs dry. However, there is really no other option, other than returning to pre-Industrial Age times, other than a rather large amount of fossil fuels to power our country at this time, unless you want to go the French route and use nuclear power instead. We're banking on technology to wean us off fossil fuels and God help us if that doesn't pan out.
 
[quote name='mykevermin']The idea of human needs is interesting. Given what occurs in the third world everyday (that $5 billion Bush promised to help fight AIDS in Africa in 2002/3? Not a dime has been given); given what we ignore everyday (why we haven't tried to oust Robert Mugabe in the name of "spreading democracy" is beyond me, not to mention Sudan, Syria, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, et al.); given the human needs denied in this country in the past five years in favor of corporate profits (perhaps you could explain to me how medicaire was improved by the Bush bill, other than providing a .7 billion dollar profit to pharmaceuticals - how have the people on medicaire been helped?); given the human needs ignored (and continuing to be ignored) both in Iraq and Cuba in our prisons; given the human needs ignored consistently by this administration (Bush's 2005 budget eliminated Pell (?) grants for low-income students to attend vocational school - and these are the very students who require educational assistance more than any other student), I fail to see how supplemental oil is a "human need."[/QUOTE]

Interesting post, since everything you mentioned (our military, modern medicine, prisons, schools) needs energy to happen, and we get energy from oil among other sources. I'm also rather interested to know what you would have happen in Sudan/Syria/Iran/N.Korea/Saudi Arabia/etc, unless you mean something like what happened in Iraq, yet this gets us off the subject. I guess I should just say hey, I'm not arguing Bush/Republican policies, just ANWR drilling.

It's strange to me how people can live the way they do, using cars and heating and air conditioning and electricity to play video games and all, and yet are against actually getting the energy sources to make such things work. The reality is that an industrial economy cannot at this point in time be run off renewable energy alone, thus we have to find fossil fuels or uranium. This seems the best way to get a lot of oil while harming a miniscule portion of a mostly desolate environment. Thus, common sense says do it.
 
[quote name='camoor']Human need, or corporate greed?[/QUOTE]

All corporations are greedy. That is their function, to make money. That's the way capitalism works. If you don't like it, don't buy their products.

And we do need it. As I explained in previous posts, our modern economy needs energy sources to function. Seeing as this is a discussion using the Internet, I don't doubt that you use your share of energy, too. It's hypocritical to use energy and then slam those who try and supply it to you as being "greedy." If you can name a better place to get energy at this point in time than ANWR, I'm sure plenty of us would be interested to hear it.
 
[quote name='elprincipe']Ah, the slippery slope argument. I don't doubt there will be more areas people want opened up for oil/gas/coal exploration. Why? Because it's necessary at this point in time for our economy.

I should also note that Alaskans and locals overwhelmingly want this drilling to happen, just like the people of Southern Utah really wanted coal development (90%+ in favor according to polls) when Clinton decided that they shouldn't have any say over their own future. People in these areas want jobs and see this kind of development as the way to get them. Regrettably, not everyone can be a movie star in Hollywood or a stock broker on Wall Street. Rural areas have people who want to make a living for themselves as well.

Again, balance is the key here. Just getting more oil only postpones the eventual reckoning when it runs dry. However, there is really no other option, other than returning to pre-Industrial Age times, other than a rather large amount of fossil fuels to power our country at this time, unless you want to go the French route and use nuclear power instead. We're banking on technology to wean us off fossil fuels and God help us if that doesn't pan out.[/QUOTE]

Slippery slope technically, but it's based on what has already happened (though I don't understand why you complain about it being a slippery slope, then say you don't doubt it is). Slippery slope, as it's usually used, assumes things that haven't happened yet (ie. they're going to legalize pedophelia), I'm not doing that here. They always DO move on to the next place, that's true all over the world.

But you have to understand my view, you don't seem to. We're not talking about the nation starving to death, I'm never going to agree with harming the environment for some relatively minor economic gain. I don't really care if they want it or not, these areas are set aside for wildlife, that's the whole point, so humans can't exploit it. There are too few of these as it is. There are some things that should not be democratic, minority rights and wildlife conservation being among them. Being set aside for wildlife, they are not for human exploitation. I'm not going to permanently sacrifice nature and wildlife for some temporary economic benefit. There's always a benefit to the economy, doesn't mean the benefit outweighs the cost. At best (most likely won't even work like this) it reduces some dependency on foreign oil, not something I care about when considering what they had to do to do that. We keep destroying the environment as it is, why the hell would I want to speed that up?

It is hypocritical that I use all this energy (computer and such), and I drive a hell of a lot more than I need to (drove 120+ miles to another city today because I was bored). But, at the same time, I support raising gas prices to 4 or 5 a gallon to force people to conserve more gas. It is hypocritical in the sense I do the very things that make this worse, but at the same time I support practically everything to make it harder on me to continue to do that. If you gave me a choice to get rid of these things altogether I'd do so, but I'm essentially addicted to technology. The best I can muster is practically insignificant things, I buy recycled products when I can, have a bunch of places and companies I won't buy from due to various practices (oddly nike isn't on there), and don't eat most meat. Dairy is probably too woven into my diet for me to stop eating any animal product, though vegetarian may be within reach, down to shrimp, salmon, as well as crab and oyster in products such as soup, but not just plain or resembling what they look like whole, most other meat has come to disgust me.

If all this crashed due to lack of energy (long before everything vanished they'd switch what's left to necessary serives, such as hospitals), I'd be dealing more with withdrawal symptoms than tears. Let's put everything we have into developing newer, clean sources, and I think I'm to the point where I'd prefer nuclear energy over this, we're getting nowhere and we're destroying way too much in the process.
 
[quote name='alonzomourning23']Slippery slope technically, but it's based on what has already happened (though I don't understand why you complain about it being a slippery slope, then say you don't doubt it is). Slippery slope, as it's usually used, assumes things that haven't happened yet (ie. they're going to legalize pedophelia), I'm not doing that here. They always DO move on to the next place, that's true all over the world.

But you have to understand my view, you don't seem to. We're not talking about the nation starving to death, I'm never going to agree with harming the environment for some relatively minor economic gain. I don't really care if they want it or not, these areas are set aside for wildlife, that's the whole point, so humans can't exploit it. There are too few of these as it is. There are some things that should not be democratic, minority rights and wildlife conservation being among them. Being set aside for wildlife, they are not for human exploitation. I'm not going to permanently sacrifice nature and wildlife for some temporary economic benefit. There's always a benefit to the economy, doesn't mean the benefit outweighs the cost. At best (most likely won't even work like this) it reduces some dependency on foreign oil, not something I care about when considering what they had to do to do that. We keep destroying the environment as it is, why the hell would I want to speed that up?[/QUOTE]

I guess a lot depends on how much you see this as harming the environment within ANWR. I'm pretty well convinced that it's minimal space/harm to an environment so vast and sparse that I hardly see what the hubub is about. OTOH, you see it as major damage to wildlife in the area.
 
[quote name='elprincipe']Interesting post, since everything you mentioned (our military, modern medicine, prisons, schools) needs energy to happen, and we get energy from oil among other sources. I'm also rather interested to know what you would have happen in Sudan/Syria/Iran/N.Korea/Saudi Arabia/etc, unless you mean something like what happened in Iraq, yet this gets us off the subject. I guess I should just say hey, I'm not arguing Bush/Republican policies, just ANWR drilling.

It's strange to me how people can live the way they do, using cars and heating and air conditioning and electricity to play video games and all, and yet are against actually getting the energy sources to make such things work. The reality is that an industrial economy cannot at this point in time be run off renewable energy alone, thus we have to find fossil fuels or uranium. This seems the best way to get a lot of oil while harming a miniscule portion of a mostly desolate environment. Thus, common sense says do it.[/QUOTE]

We could be doing much more with renewable energy, but the energy sector (nuclear and fossil fuel) is highly subsidized by our tax dollars. Renewable energy, on the other hand, receives little in the way of subsidies. If the same degree of subsidies were given to the renewable energy companies, they would be able to compete with fossil fuels in terms of pricing. This would encourage growth in the renewable energy field. But of course the Bush administration has cut funding into renewable energy sources and will not give those companies any tax money, nor will it take away current subsidies from the nuclear and fossil fuel companies. Until there is a level playing field renewable energy will sit on the sidelines. Of course, yesterday I read that gas prices are expected to hit at least $3.00 per gallon this summer and could go as high as $4.00 per gallon, so maybe we'll see the Bush administration cave in on renewable energy.
 
And subsidies are about the least efficient way of fomenting change, since very rarely does the government ever turn off the money spigot.
If the energy industries saw a viable, profitable market for renewable resources of any sort, they would be spending millions of their own money creating alternatives--because then they could benefit billions in profit. Governmentally subsidizing that research would be a sure way to slow down any progress, becaus once the project is done, the guaranteed funds would turn off.
The best way to have a 'level playing field' is get the government *out* of it, and open the markets up to what consumers want.
And we sure do talk a lot about evil gas prices, when in actuality transportation only accounts for about 60% of our oil usage, and only about 50% of that is 'personal' transportation--the rest is housing, heating, factories, trucks transporting goods, etc. Gas is certainly the most obvious, but it's not the largest component of that.
 
[quote name='dtcarson']Governmentally subsidizing that research would be a sure way to slow down any progress, becaus once the project is done, the guaranteed funds would turn off.[/QUOTE]

Huh?
 
The people conducting the research, getting the subsidies, would not be motivated to find any results, because at that point their guaranteed income would stop. Bird in the hand and all that. It's actually a demotivator. In private industry, while they do spend money in R&D, they want to get a good result as quickly as possible so they can stop spending R&D and start making profit. But if the money is someone else's [the taxpayers] handed to you by someone who has no real vested interest in your project, why would you turn that money source off?
 
[quote name='dtcarson']The people conducting the research, getting the subsidies, would not be motivated to find any results, because at that point their guaranteed income would stop. Bird in the hand and all that. It's actually a demotivator. In private industry, while they do spend money in R&D, they want to get a good result as quickly as possible so they can stop spending R&D and start making profit. But if the money is someone else's [the taxpayers] handed to you by someone who has no real vested interest in your project, why would you turn that money source off?[/QUOTE]

Show me evidence that pulling government money from research actually benefits that research. Private industry wants results, that's true. But if there isn't much to be made, or the payoff isn't that great or uncertain, they're not going to put much, if any, money into it.
 
[quote name='dtcarson']The people conducting the research, getting the subsidies, would not be motivated to find any results, because at that point their guaranteed income would stop. Bird in the hand and all that. It's actually a demotivator. In private industry, while they do spend money in R&D, they want to get a good result as quickly as possible so they can stop spending R&D and start making profit. But if the money is someone else's [the taxpayers] handed to you by someone who has no real vested interest in your project, why would you turn that money source off?[/QUOTE]

Oh, gotcha. I've heard this argument before, and while it makes sense, I'm not sure I believe it. I've not seen any evidence that this is true.

You are more than welcome, of course, to show me some.

myke.
 
[quote name='dtcarson']The people conducting the research, getting the subsidies, would not be motivated to find any results, because at that point their guaranteed income would stop. Bird in the hand and all that. It's actually a demotivator. In private industry, while they do spend money in R&D, they want to get a good result as quickly as possible so they can stop spending R&D and start making profit. But if the money is someone else's [the taxpayers] handed to you by someone who has no real vested interest in your project, why would you turn that money source off?[/QUOTE]
In private industry, the people in R&D are essentially always solely R&D. You don't do R&D for a couple months, then go work on the assembly line. If a company decides it needs to spend less on R&D, the former R&D people are now unemployed.

In other words, your theory is nonsense.
 
[quote name='coffman']We could be doing much more with renewable energy, but the energy sector (nuclear and fossil fuel) is highly subsidized by our tax dollars. Renewable energy, on the other hand, receives little in the way of subsidies. If the same degree of subsidies were given to the renewable energy companies, they would be able to compete with fossil fuels in terms of pricing. This would encourage growth in the renewable energy field. But of course the Bush administration has cut funding into renewable energy sources and will not give those companies any tax money, nor will it take away current subsidies from the nuclear and fossil fuel companies. Until there is a level playing field renewable energy will sit on the sidelines. Of course, yesterday I read that gas prices are expected to hit at least $3.00 per gallon this summer and could go as high as $4.00 per gallon, so maybe we'll see the Bush administration cave in on renewable energy.[/QUOTE]

Well, I freely admit I don't know much about energy subsidies. I'm all for a level playing field, with the government involved only to push on things that would benefit all of us, like the development of renewable energy resources. I feel sometimes the government has to kick-start R&D in an area before the private sector realizes it could be good business, but generally I'd like government out of any subsides. Any links to good info on these subsides?
 
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