On the Road Again
 

Willie Nelson sells biodiesel.

BioWillie sounds perfect for Mr. Nelson: Farm Aid plus something to irritate the establishment with.

And to think that the Texas Legislature wouldn't name a highway after this man.

Sebastian Kennedy's Take on The End of Oil, or Fuck Environmentalists
 

Undoubtedly he is very well qualified to comment. But figuring out that an explosion of a rocket carrying radioactive material high in the atmosphere might result in spreading the radioactive material over a wide area doesn't really take a rocket scientist, does it? I think that was fringey's point.

My father is a doctor and was a chest specialist for something like 45 years. He is very well qualified to say that smoking a lot is bad for your lungs. But do you really need to hear it from him?

Sebastian Kennedy's Take on The End of Oil, or Fuck Environmentalists
 

Are you kidding? He doesn't want to get near that shit.

And he is particularly well qualified to know that high exposure to radiation is bad for you.

Sebastian Kennedy's Take on The End of Oil, or Fuck Environmentalists
 

Personally I favor drilling in the ANWR, fucking Stevens notwithstanding. But why do you assume that the environmental impact would be comparable to this one, apparently very well managed, project in Indonesia rather than to all the other projects that have gone so horribly (and not just ones managed by third-world oil cos)?

And the ANWR is particularly remote and environmentally sensitive.* It's not like you just fly in on a helicopter with a drill set; you need an infrastructure to support the drilling, the personnel, the transport, the import of huge quantities of fuel (yes, they import fuel into drilling sites -- because drilling, particularly in the Arctic, is high-energy work and they won't refine the crude in the ANWR), etc. The Indonesia project, I suspect, did not confront anywhere near these kinds of difficulties.


*Yes, I know that seems inconsistent with my favoring the drilling. But just because it's sensitive doesn't mean it's more than a bunch of fucking caribou.

Sebastian Kennedy's Take on The End of Oil, or Fuck Environmentalists
 

Cred-u-lous (n): Spanky.

Sebastian Kennedy's Take on The End of Oil, or Fuck Environmentalists
 

It's not like there's none of that stuff in the North Slope already. (and they do in fact refine a bit of the crude their for purposes of fueling the operations--they top off the light ends for kerosene/gasoline, and put the rest in the TAPS.

Sebastian Kennedy's Take on The End of Oil, or Fuck Environmentalists
 

I assume it would be the same if you put the same restrictions on the Chevron that the New Guinian government did. Use the same lease agreement.

The point is it can be done correctly as long as you watch the oil company. You make it in their pecuniary interest to follow the ruls. In others fine them into the ground if they break the rules of the lease.

The bottom line on ANWAR
 

George Will

Our Fake Drilling Debate: Collectively Hiding Behind ANWR

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 Arctic National Wildlife Refuge — area 1002 — to drilling for oil and natural 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 working on opening ANWR.

But this interminable argument actually could end soon with Congress authorizing drilling. That would be good for energy policy and excellent for the nation's governance.

Area 1002 is 1.5 million of the refuge's 19 million acres. In 1980 a Democratically controlled Congress, at the behest of President Jimmy Carter, set area 1002 aside for possible energy exploration. Since then, although there are active oil and gas wells in at least 36 U.S. wildlife refuges, stopping drilling in ANWR has become sacramental for environmentalists who speak about it the way Wordsworth wrote about the Lake Country.

Few opponents of energy development in what they call "pristine" ANWR have visited it. Those who have and who think it is "pristine" must have visited during the 56 days a year when it is without sunlight. They missed the roads, stores, houses, military installations, airstrip and school. They did not miss seeing the trees in area 1002. There are no trees.

Opponents worry that the caribou will be disconsolate about, and their reproduction disrupted by, this intrusion by man. The same was said 30 years ago by opponents of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, which brings heated oil south from Prudhoe Bay. Since the oil began flowing, the caribou have increased from 5,000 to 31,000. Perhaps the pipeline's heat makes them amorous.

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 cost is too high for what the ineffable John Kerry calls "a few drops of oil." Some drops. The estimated 10.4 billion barrels of recoverable oil — such estimates frequently underestimate actual yields — could supply all the oil needs of Kerry's Massachusetts for 75 years.

Flowing at 1 million barrels a day — equal to 20 percent of today's domestic oil production — ANWR oil would almost equal America's daily imports 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 amount too small to justify exploration and development projects, many current and future projects around the world would be abandoned.

But for many opponents of drilling in the refuge, the debate is only secondarily about energy and the environment. Rather, it is a disguised debate about elemental political matters.

For some people, environmentalism is collectivism in drag. Such people use 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 adjusting society's balance between freedom and equality. The primary goal of collectivism — of socialism in Europe and contemporary liberalism in America — is to enlarge governmental supervision of individuals' lives. This is done in the name of equality.

People are to be conscripted into one large cohort, everyone equal (although not equal in status or power to the governing class) in their status as wards of a self-aggrandizing government. Government says the constant 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, particularly of what makes modern society modern — the energy requisite for social dynamism and individual autonomy. Hence collectivists use environmentalism to advance a collectivizing energy policy. Focusing on one energy source at a time, they stress the environmental hazards of finding, developing, transporting, manufacturing or using oil, natural gas, coal or nuclear power.

A quarter of a century of this tactic applied to ANWR is about 24 years too many. If geologists were to decide that there were only three thimbles of oil beneath area 1002, there would still be something to be said for going down to get them, just to prove that this nation cannot be forever paralyzed by people wielding environmentalism as a cover for collectivism.

The bottom line on ANWAR
 

What a load of crap. Environmentalists don't like scarcity any more than they like paying through the nose at the gas station to fill up their SUVs. What Will apparently does not understand -- or chooses not to acknowledge -- is that there are many, many people -- Republicans and Democrats alike -- who value wilderness., something you need government to provide.

On the Road Again
 

I was thinking somehow this was going to have something to do with hemp. I'm slightly disappointed, actually.

Heh.
 

Good to know that the Halliburton Obsessives can be funny.

The bottom line on ANWAR
 

I don't see how this is responsive to the column. A major part of Will's point is that wilderness won't be lost to the proposed drilling. Assume that is true; is the concern a slippery slope? I'm a huge supporter of the environment and wilderness...but these things can work in tandem with other goals. The pipeline is a decent example, and this seems to be even less intrusive.

The bottom line on ANWAR
 

Definitionally, wilderness lacks roads. So you can't assume that building roads into ANWR will leave it as wilderness.

(People who really believe in free markets ought to acknowledge the preferences that so many people have for wilderness, and think about how to structure things so that these people get what they want.)

I have seen debunking of the claim that developing ANWR will barely change it. It's out there on the web if you want to look for it. The game is do things like count only the few square inches of ground space taken up by the supports for the pipeline, rather than than the mass of the pipeline.

Perhaps I could live with opening ANWR if it were part of a deal that would do other things to promote conservation and energy independence. On it's own, the issue is a distraction from things that could make a real difference.

The bottom line on ANWAR
 

Definitionally? A made-up definition (made up by whomever, adopted by whomever, and particularly if done by or for use by government) is virtually meaningless. It's a convenience of reference, not necessarily something that tells you whether you have the same experience from being there (or the caribous' being there) or not.

Personally, I'm not interested in word or math games about it. Does what is proposed fundamentally, materially change things for the negative? Is this the wilderness we should be most concerned with protecting?

"(People who really believe in free markets ought to acknowledge the preferences that so many people have for wilderness, and think about how to structure things so that these people get what they want.)"

There is something about this that strikes me as offensive. Wilderness, nature, etc. are good in themselves, not something that "these people" should "get" if they "want."

The bottom line on ANWAR
 

I'm not playing word games. The thing that distinguishes "wilderness" from other patches of land is that it's not developed.

Yes, if you attach importance to wilderness as I and most people use the term. Many, many people want to protect wilderness.

If I understand you correctly, you are saying that although many, many people want to preserve wilderness, a more enlightened view would dictate using the land differently. That starts to sound like collectivism that Will was beefing about.

Well, I agree. My point was that enough people agree with you and me about this that people like Will should respect our preferences.