Fatale Abstraction

The ever-brilliant Tam over at View From the Porch had a succint nail-on-the-head post on the folly of ignoring the oil reserves in ANWR. You should click here and read it and read the interesting follow-up comments, particularly from one person who has been to ANWR and conducted 10 years of research in that region. If you think drilling in ANWR would be tragic for this nation, the world and the environment, you need to back away from the Kool-Aid table, my friend, because someone has been lying to you.

Anyway, in the comments, Erik links to a couple pictures - one from MSNBC that was purported to be ANWR, and links to a National Review Online article that show photos of what, in fact, this coastal wetland actually DOES look like. For the sake of argument, the NRO article also includes photos of what a pipeline looks like in a similar area which you can see here.

All those who commented say it better than I, but in a nutshell, they say that unlike the verdant rolling grasslands populated by buffalo from the propaganda campaign, this area is in fact a mosquito-infested vista of desolation. Winters are too cold and dark for trees to live there, and the journalist from NRO said the nearby mountains resemble piles of gravel. Apparently the earth there is so oil-rich that there are huge ponds of crude oil just sitting around, and the person who did the 10 year ANWR study said if we drill, the environment will be cleaner. Seems to me just leaving this crude everywhere would serve to kill whatever tiny bit of wildlife would otherwise be in the region.

Tam's point was that given the tension in regions of other major oil reserves in the world and/or their lunatic despot leaders, it is inevitable that we will have to dip into ANWR, and which seems a more sensible approach - finally caving and drilling in a panic after our economy is in the crapper, or a well-reasoned, calm and careful approach now while we are not desperate for oil?

I'm in.