US House approves Alaska refuge drilling
Ignoring vigorous opposition from Canada, the US House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly yesterday to open Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. The controversial move, which risks triggering another showdown between the two countries, sent Canadian officials in Washington scrambling to find last-minute allies in the Senate to try to block the legislation before Congress recesses for Christmas. The Alaskan oil provision was approved in the House after pro-drilling representatives succeeded in attaching it to an unrelated US$453-billion military-spending bill that funds troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. The defence appropriations bill passed 308-106 amid outrage from drilling opponents who said they were forced, in effect, to choose between supporting US troops or the northern caribou herds who live where the oil exploration is to occur. "I have consistently and repeatedly opposed drilling," said Representative Mark Kennedy, a Wisconsin Republican. "However it would be the height of irresponsibility to vote against a bill that funds our troops and our military while our nation is at war."
Ottawa has repeatedly lobbied Washington to drop plans to drill for oil in the 600,000-hectare refuge, a sensitive wilderness preserve that borders the Yukon in northeastern Alaska. In private meetings and telephone calls with President Bush, Prime Minister Paul Martin has warned oil activity threatens the migratory Porcupine caribou herds that members of Canada's Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation rely on for sustenance. Ottawa also maintains oil drilling would violate a 1987 bilateral agreement to forego any activities that could harm the herds or their habitat. The White House argues drilling in the Alaskan refuge would help the US reduce its dependence on foreign oil, but Congress has consistently blocked stand-alone legislation to allow oil activity. The move to include Arctic drilling provisions in a military-spending bill was the brainchild of Senator Ted Stevens, an Alaska Republican who had vowed to win approval for oil exploration before Christmas.
By yesterday afternoon, it appeared Canada had allies in high-profile senators John Kerry, John McCain and Joseph Lieberman, who vowed to try to strip the drilling provisions from the military-spending bill. "As somebody who supports the military, I am not going to allow this precedent to be set that every year we adopt a defence appropriations bill, somebody with a pet project who happens to be in a position of power is going to attach it at the last minute," Lieberman said. Senator John McCain of Arizona called Stevens' tactics "disgusting." "It's disgraceful that I have to be put in that position" of choosing between troop funding and oil drilling, he said. Studies have estimated the Arctic refuge holds five to 16 billion barrels of recoverable oil, an amount Stephane Dion, the federal Environment Minister, has dismissed as insignificant compared to US demands for energy. "It would give them what -- six months of oil?" Dion said in October before a meeting at the White House on the issue.
(National Post 051220)
Open letter to ANWR:
Sorry, but I gotta kill ya! Yes, sweet sweet crude. I've come to realize that I am addicted to the stuff to the point now that I will do anything (ANYTHING) to get more of it. Even if it means hurting and/or killing the things and people I love. Even if it means making enemies and destroying myself and everything around me. Don't take it personally; It's not my fault - I'm just living up to the stereotype of a hopeless druggie - fully aware that I have a terrible problem, but so hopelessly mired in my addiction that my only option is to convince myself not to do anything about it but get more of the good stuff, oh yeah. That's all I care about anymore. I'll try to remember how great and essential you once were before I altered you, possibly destroyed you, but after a couple of years I'll have finished with you and will most likely forget about it all, including the lifeless body I've left behind as I go on searching for more of the precious.....
Love,
Western society
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