Excellent. U.S. House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio is leading a Republican delegation to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in photo-op/staged event to drum up support for oil drilling there.
From CNN.com:
Calling the trip the “American Energy Tour,” the Republican Members will stop first at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado on Friday, July 18. From there the group will travel to Alaska and visit Prudhoe Bay on Sunday, July 20th, and then embark on an aerial tour of the potential drilling area in ANWR. The group will also meet with local tribal leaders in the small community of Katovik, Alaska.
Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi through a spokesman responded thusly:
Nadeam Elshami, spokesman for Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, said: “Depending on how long their weekend is, there are 68 million acres already leased to oil companies that could be drilled today and which Republicans can visit — and to lower gas prices now instead of ten years from now — they should join the Speaker in calling on the President to release some oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.”
What’s missing from Pelosi’s reaction is an explanation as to why drilling in ANWR and off the coasts won’t help us at all, nada, zilch, no pennies. In about a decade, adding oil from those regions might lower the price of gas by about 10 cents, but at rate global oil demand is growing, the savings will be gobbled up before we ever see any impact at the pump. Pelosi might also want to point out how the president two years ago explicitedly criticized America for being “addicted to oil,” and then last month called for more domestic drilling. Huh?
Wouldn’t it be something if these GOP lawmakers went up to ANWR and fell so in love with the scenery as to have a change of heart. I doubt it will happen, but you know, just thinking …
The other problem with opening ANWR, which was named a “refuge” for a reason, is the precedent it would set. What’s next? Drilling in Yosemite? Put up an oil derrick in the Everglades, and it does nothing to reduce the “addiction” to oil. The only thing that will is to diversify the fuel we use for transportation (and not ethanol, a cure that can be worse than the symptoms).
