-Caveat Lector-
----- Original Message -----
From: "The Reverend" <jehlickova@...>
March 1, 2002
Two Thousand Acres
By PAUL KRUGMAN
According to my calculations, my work space occupies only a few square
inches of office floor. You may find this implausible, but I'm using a
well-accepted methodology. Well accepted, that is, among supporters of
oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Last week Interior Secretary Gale Norton repeated the standard response
to concerns about extensive oil development in one of America's last
wild places: "The impact will be limited to just 2,000 out of 1.9
million acres of the refuge."
That number comes from the House version of the Bush-Cheney energy plan,
which promises that "surface acreage covered by production and support
facilities" will not exceed 2,000 acres. It's a reassuring picture: a
tiny enclave of development, practically lost in the Arctic vastness.
But that picture is a fraud. Development won't be limited to a small
enclave: according to the U.S. Geological Survey, oil in ANWR is
scattered in many separate pools, so drilling rigs would be spread all
across the coastal plain. The roads linking those rigs aren't part of
the 2,000 acres: they're not "production and support facilities." And
"surface acreage covered" is very narrowly defined: if a pipeline snakes
across the terrain on a series of posts, only the ground on which those
posts rest counts; bare ground under the pipeline isn't considered
"covered."
Now you see how I work in such a small space. By those definitions, my
"impact" is limited to floor areas that literally have stuff resting on
them: the bottoms of the legs on my desk and chair, and the soles of my
shoes. The rest of my office floor is pristine wilderness.
There's a lesson here that goes well beyond the impact of oil drilling
on caribou. Deceptive advertising pervades the administration's effort
to sell the nation on its drill-and-burn energy strategy. In fact, those
of us following this issue can't see why people made such a fuss about
the Pentagon's plan to disseminate false information. How would that
differ from current policy?
Remember that this latest push to open up ANWR for drilling follows on
the heels of an attempt to portray a plan to do nothing much about
global warming as a major policy initiative. What else has the
administration said about its energy plans that isn't true?
Top of the list, surely, is the claim that drilling in ANWR is a
national security issue, the key to ending our dependence on imported
oil. In fact, the Energy Information Administration's preferred scenario
says that even a decade after development begins, ANWR will produce only
between 600,000 and 900,000 barrels of oil a day - a small fraction of
the 11 million barrels we currently import.
Then there's the absurd claim that ANWR drilling will create hundreds of
thousands of jobs - a claim based on a decade-old study by, you guessed
it, the oil industry's trade association.
But the most nefarious aspect of the administration's energy propaganda
is its persistent effort to link energy shortages to environmentalism -
an effort that, it's now clear, has often been consciously dishonest.
For example, last spring Dick Cheney lamented the fact that the U.S.
hadn't built any new oil refineries since the 1970's, linking that lack
of construction to environmental restrictions. I wrote a column last May
pointing out that environmentalism had nothing to do with it, that
refineries hadn't been built because the industry had excess capacity.
What I didn't know was that several weeks earlier staffers at the
Environmental Protection Agency had written a scathing critique of Mr.
Cheney's draft energy report, making exactly the same point. The final
version of the report, by the way, doesn't say in so many words that
clean-air rules cause gasoline shortages - but it conveys that
impression by innuendo.
For now, it's possible for diligent citizens to cut through these
deceptions - for example, you can read on the Web what the U.S.
Geological Survey actually has to say about oil reserves in the Arctic.
But I keep wondering when the administration will shut down those Web
sites. After all, under John Ashcroft's new rules, agencies are no
longer instructed to release information whenever possible; they're
supposed to refuse requests to release information whenever there's a
legal basis for doing so. And honest assessments of oil reserves in
environmentally sensitive locations might be useful to terrorists - you
never know.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/01/opinion/01KRUG.html
The Reverend wrote:
>
> brurpeele wrote:
> >
> > I have not paid a whole lot of attention to the debate over oil
> > drilling in the Alaskan National Wildlife Reserve. Today I heard
> > that approximately 2,000 acres of land will be affected out 19.6
> > million. Thats quite a small percentage.
>
> 2,000 acres of actual pipes sprawling across the landscape forming
> massive grids. The 2,000 acres is not to be concentrated in one area but
> will instead spread across hundreds of thousands of acres.
--
The Reverend
http://web.telecom.cz/Gnostradamus
<A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A>
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