The Truth About ANWR

There is an email going around called "the truth with ANWR" which expresses three fallacies-

-- that the only problem is energy dependence and consequently independence is a public good.
- that the planet is huge relative to where we live and we can exploit remote areas without consequence.
- that barren areas are not worth protection.

The problem of today is peak everything, a resource limited world. Hello that's why remote areas like ANWR are relevant. More than: after this what? questions should be asked like: why are we in this pickle and what can we do differently today to not need ANWR? Is drilling pollution neutral? Why did we get rid of coastal drilling in California? Is oil transportation pollution neutral? Would we want to live in Benitia or Martinez? Do we like living downwind from B&M?

Energy independence is not a pubic good for the same reason we are not clamoring for banana independence or coffee independence. Its only a public concept to get public resources expended to destroy wilderness (places where we can't live) for corporations who cannot see the big picture because of their structure and time lines.

We may not live in ANWR and thus its remote but others do- the Gwitchen Indians and the Inupiat Eskimos. For the same reasons that we don't want a prison or a water tank in our back yard they shouldn't have oil drilling in their front yard. The ANWR is the calving ground of their porcupine Caribou herds.

The Mojave, Death Valley, Trinity Wilderness, and coastal areas are not really barren. They have local life forms that have adapted to niches in the food chain. ANWR's coastal plain sustains not only the Gwitchen and the Inupiat but also the Caribou and the polar bear. Its a large food trough where the Aboriginal peoples have learned to live sustainably. Our inability to do so where we live despite huge resource exploitation everywhere is what threatens their world just like it destroyed the aboriginal peoples in our world. It shouldn't be sacrificed because the governor needs another hummer or to express our sexuality in our automobiles. Why destroy another wilderness to pollute the air and water in the Bay Area?

More fundamentally there is not enough oil there to meet even five years of consumption at present rates assuming we really go independent.

Policy makers at CCAG seem stuck in providing the wrong infrastructure. That's why in "emergencies," like the present search for energy independence, people are in this pickle of not having enough train cars at CALTRAIN and buses at SAMTRANS, and missing connections and no bikeways, when they have happily given the thumbs up to SUVs for the past forty years after the "era of limits" proclaimed by Jerry Brown.

Fortunately people have always felt unempowered and distrusting of government...

because they have no say over fundamental decision making around them, like the quality of water they are forced to drink or air they have to breathe or the toxins in the food they have to eat or the quality of paint allowed in the school the kids have to go to or the lunch they have to eat. So people take the political compromise from non participation and turn it into a general conspiracy of a criminal government against the individual. Second timeliness is a problem that extends this conspiracy when getting something done, like a traffic signal or a stop sign, takes forever.

People are stressed by the golden handcuffs and distances over which they transact their lives (i.e the importance of energy cost) and there is a xenophobia here, which is also taken out against the government, which is that living in isolation wouldn't be so bad if the government stopped allowing more people to come live near me.

Finally how difficult can life be? Breathing dirty air, eating tainted food, and living in traffic toxic neighborhoods can't be that difficult. So politicians at CCAG must be stupid is the assumption.

So companies can exploit this distrust by taking a common bad like the problem with energy usage and its cost, and instead of arriving at a common good like transit or compact neighborhoods that don't need huge energy inputs, the very decisions that average Americans make when gas prices are high, politicians and publicist for corporations assume that the common bad must be a good, since we are doing it, and want to deplete the resources without verifying the actual amount or understanding the cost of making it happen, and of course given the unempowerment, timeliness, stress, and xenophobia peoples distrust of government is verified.