Alaskan Oil

Whenever someone mentions exploring for oil in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, emotions immediately begin to run high. The environmentalists start by talking about preserving a pristine wilderness and saving the Porcupine Caribou Herd. The pristine wilderness is no more than a frozen desert. The Porcupine Caribou Herd is in no danger.

There are no rolling hills covered with forest in ANWR. There are no hills, for that matter. It is a flat, barren wasteland. As for the caribou, it has been proven in Alaska's other major oilfield, Prudhoe Bay, that the wildlife and the oil industry can peacefully coexist.

The Central Arctic Caribou Herd numbers in Prudhoe Bay are at their highest level in their entire history on Earth. Never have so many caribou lived there. When Prudhoe Bay was being developed, the same gloom and doom predictions were made about their caribou herd. It has become obvious that the doomsayers are merely extremists with no arguments based in fact.

The Inupiat Eskimos, the native people of the ANWR area, support oil exploration. They are appalled at the level the rhetoric has reached and want their voice heard. The development of ANWR will enable them to live above Third World standards and insure the future of their children.

All the resistance to oil exploration exclaims the need to stop "Big Oil" from destroying our planet. Who is "Big Oil"? Is it some faceless conglomeration of industry executives that only want to rip and destroy everything they can? No, it's you and me. "Big Oil" is everyone that ever uses a car, a boat or an airplane. "Big Oil" is everyone that heats their home by any means other than solar energy. "Big Oil" is Greenpeace that uses their diesel powered ships to navigate and pollute our oceans in the name of saving us from ourselves. "Big Oil" does have a face, it's yours and mine.

Unless we do something to replace the declining oil reserves of Prudhoe Bay, we only become more and more dependent on oil from the Middle East. We will see a national energy problem exactly like what California is going through with their electricity shortages. No internal production of energy and completely dependent, and at the whim of, outside sources.

Become educated about the facts of ANWR. Visit http://www.anwr.org/ .