Bad Week for the Environment
 

I think it was Monday that Dubya adopted rules which accomplished the reductions in environmental protections that he could not get Congress to pass. Congress decides that these protections should remain, and Dubya does the end-around play and removes them through rule-making. Pretty cute, huh? This is your "president" I am talking about. The one whose agenda was known from the start. And whose performance is exactly what we predicted. Sulfur emission regulations are gone.

Today, I believe Congress will act on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge matter. For those of you who are curious, Dubya has an intense desire to drill for oil there, even though all analysts say not enough oil will be produced to make a difference in the nation's oil supply. It almost looks like someone owes a favor, or stands to make personal money out of this. Anyway, the measure has been defeated by Congress as a separate bill, but Dubya is using an interesting trick this time. He's placed this measure in the budget. Where it does not belong. Because as a budget measure, this act requires only a simple majority. Analysts also seem to be in agreement that the majority of the American people oppose this. Oh, that's right, when it comes to American lives, national security and other small matters like oil production and the environment, Dubya does not give a rat's ass about popular opinion. Cuz he's just that much smarter than the rest of us, I guess.

So, it's a bad week for the environment but an excellent week for Dubya. He's successfully thwarted both Congress and the American people, and gas prices are reaching a record high! (I guess the financial markets are not as impressed as the "political market" with the 'mission' we have 'accomplished' in Iraq.

I speculate that, should one or more oil companies commence drilling in the ANWR, we'll see a consumer boycott of that company or companies.

Supe - have you been listening to Air America again? I ask because it is grammitically incorrect to imply that the "environment" is having a "bad week". The environment is not a living being and is therefore incapable of having a 'good' day, a 'crappy' day, or a 'bad' day. Abusing grammatical rules for the specific purpose of denigrating a political party is a really cute trick though ...... :D

Sulphur emissions regulations are certainly not gone. Otherwise I'd be out of a job right now. Shell spent $350 million last year on five plants to produce low sulphur gasoline. They are spending another $350 million at five refinineries to produce ULTRA low sulphur diesel (<8ppm).

We should drill in ANWR. There's nothing up there but snow, mosquitos and oil.

The American people oppose $55/bbl oil. I wont be boycotting any oil company that drills there.

LOL! Touche'

A bad day? I’d say the environment is in the middle of a bad eight years.

Exactly how will the oil from ANWR reduce the price of oil used to make gasoline? Can you refine the oil from ANWR in the refineries around the SF bay area?

You mean like they boycotted Exxon after the Exxon Valdez? The American people are too greedy and self centered to boycott anything, especially cheap gas. What happened to the Nike boycott, the K-Mart clothing line boycott, etc. etc.? It just doesn't happen here. Americans are willing to speak up and protest, but if and when it ever comes down to personal inconvenience or expense, the big corporations know they have us right where they want us.

Drilling in ANSWR won't reduce the price of oil, it will simply bring more $^10 to GWB's oil buddies.

I hope you’re not serious. If you are, that’s a pretty uneducated statement. There is a reason it’s called a “Wildlife Refuge.” From the US Fish & Wildlife’s web site:

“Arctic National Wildlife Refuge was established to preserve unique wildlife, wilderness and recreational values; to conserve caribou herds, polar bears, grizzly bears, muskox, dall sheep, wolves, wolverines, snow geese, peregrine falcons, other migratory birds, dolly varden, and grayling; to fulfill international treaty obligations; to provide opportunities for continued subsistence uses; and to ensure necessary water quality and quantity.”

http://arctic.fws.gov/


Go to the website and get educated a bit before you make statements like that.

In my experience, our president has been deceitful to the point that I don't believe anything he says. Based on that I strongly suspect that Bush is pushing for drilling in ANWR for reasons other than the good of the country. I'm also skeptical of environmental groups (heck any group) because I realize that they depend on getting people excited about something real or not in order to further their agenda.

I'd love to reduce our dependance on foreign oil because I believe it will have a direct result in reducing the number of Americans sent to the Middle East to get shot at - people like my brother.
- How bad would drilling in the ANWR really be for the environment?
- I've heard that it will take 10 years before we see any of that oil and it won't be enough to make a difference in the nations oil supply. Obviously, if there is enough oil there that oil companies are willing to invest for 10 years before seeing any return there must be quite a bit of oil.

-Chris

The other issue has always been that our refineries can not refine alaska crude, so again I ask who will refine this gunk?

A significant way to recue our dependence is to go to hydrogen, but we need to spend some money now to reap the rewards later.

Increasing the supply of oil should lower the price, but the problem is that we can't refine it quickly enough. We haven't even had a new refinery built in 30 years, thanks to the damn hippies, and the ones that we do have run at 90% of capacity.

ANWR is a 19 MILLION acre refuge. Of that, Bush is proposing 1.5 million acres to be set aside for oil exploration. Out of that 1.5 million acres, only 2,000 acres will be devoted to drilling. That's .01% of the refuge.

cerg:

Just curious when you say the environment is not a living thing..

Really?

Look up the root meaning of the word..It is all around you.

Like we're currently doing in Iraq and what we did the Soviets?;)

- Skip

Drilling for oil can be done with minimal enviromental impact compared to strip mining which would obviously affect the enviroment. The tree huggers understandably use fear to try and scare the general public into opposing any kind of enviromental impact period.

That being said, I do claim that drilling in Alaska will solve any and all future oil problems, but it will help.

Hum, interesting article on alaska crude oil production
http://www.ncseonline.org/NLE/CRSreports/natural/nrgen-25.cfm?&CFID=14018578&CFTOKEN=79770560

will output from ANWR be like alaska crude?
http://powerpoints.wri.org/anwr/sld003.htm

from this we could just increase the refining of Alaska crude and really drop prices, sort of what happened in the early 90's

but then
"The West Coast oil glut elicited persistent expressions of concern from oil producers displeased with what they perceived as artificially depressed prices. "

We have plenty of oil now. We do not need to open ANWR.

boy, you guys and your persistent deragotory terms
damn hippies- Bryan you ain't old enough to use it
treehuggers- aka conservationists, environmentalists and almost anyone except a capitalist war monger

Can you discuss issues without using those terms?

George W is the principle archtitect is using fear to accomplish his goals.

Exactly what did we do to the Soviets?
On Iraq , is that a justification for starting the war or completing the job?

Chris, I don't think that's the way it works. If if the U.S. successfully migrated away from oil and depended on zero barrels of ME crude it would maintain a very active role in the ME. The loss of global power/leverage would be signifigant.

And how will we make the Hydrogen? You need energy to spilt the water into H2 and O2. Wind, hydro? gas? oil? or coal? The only one that really makes sense is nuclear and we know where that isn't going in the US.