Columnists
Bush Administration Using Natural Disaster To Gain Support for Man-Made Disaster
By D.L. McCracken
Sep 20, 2005, 16:06

It is indeed the ultimate irony that a natural disaster in the southern U.S. Gulf region has prompted Republican senate leaders to push for a man-made disaster in the northern Alaskan region. While most of us lament and grieve over the loss of life and home in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, government officials and oil company lobbyists appear to be almost gleeful as they prepare for October's vote in the Senate to open a large part of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil exploration and eventual drilling.

A United States Congress budget reconciliation vote is approaching this October. A budget reconciliation act disallows filibustering which is a tactic for delaying or obstructing legislation by making long speeches in Senate. In the absence of a filibuster a budget reconciliation bill can be passed into law with a simple 51 votes or a 50% majority. Budget reconciliation bills are packed together with the more controversial provisos that perhaps would not be passed on their own.

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska has been in the American government's crosshairs for 25 years but each time the proposal has been put to a congressional vote it has been defeated, sometimes marginally but defeated nonetheless. The Bush administration has been relentless in their pursuit of oil drilling expansion in Alaska to the point of now slipping the proposal into the budget reconciliation bill. If this bill is passed next month drilling in the Arctic refuge will be law.

Any law which will allow for oil exploration and subsequent drilling in the Alaskan refuge will only be the beginning of the rape and plunder of other protected areas of the United States. This past June Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Mississippi) introduced what is being referred to as a "stealth amendment" which President Bush later signed into law as part of his budget package. The amemdment allowed for the transfer of the Gulf Islands National Seashore to the State for seismic testing and oil drilling within one mile of the already eroding Louisiana Barrier Islands.

This "stealth amendment" is included in this article in order to highlight the lengths to which the current administration will go to procure protected domestic land for possible oil field discoveries all in an effort based on greed and excessive living standards including topping up the family SUV's seemingly bottomless and perpetually thirsty gas tank.

But now, supporters of the Alaskan refuge drilling bill believe they have even more reason to have this bill passed and they are now citing the destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina including damage to the oil rigs situated in the Gulf of Mexico and the shutdown of oil pipelines from the Gulf to the United States mainland. The events following Katrina they say, reinforce the urgency of dwindling world oil supplies and the absolute necessity of maintaining their own supplies from within their own country.

So, let's take a few moments to examine the repercussions of drilling in the virgin Arctic National Wildlife Reserve (ANWR), a proposal which the Bush administration is calling "responsible exploration". Arctic Power, the principal lobbying group from Alaska points out how beneficial drilling will be, promising thousands of new jobs, more revenue for state governments and a more reliable domestic energy supply.

They go on to reassure the public that exploration and drilling in Alaska will not be detrimental to indigenous plant and wildlife and in some cases will be of benefit to them. Arctic Power officials reassure us that 'only' 1.5 million acres will be explored. Officials assure us that there will be 'no negative impact on animals' and go on to say that "gas development and wildlife are [already] successfully coexisting in Alaska 's arctic" citing the flourishing population of brown bear, fox and birds living and even thriving in existing arctic oil fields. Sounds downright utopian.

Listening to proponents of oil drilling in the ANWR one almost begins to believe that drilling and digging of a million acres of previously pristine northern tundra into a muddied, dirty, quagmire is the only way we can save the indigenous species of the area.

The northernmost part of this planet is already in great jeopardy as a direct result of global warming. Arctic temperatures are rising faster than anywhere else in the world, Arctic icecaps are thinning, melting and fracturing. In other words, the Arctic is melting. The melting ice caps will cause wildlife like the polar bear to become extinct as their hunting and breeding grounds disappear. Native peoples indigenous to the Arctic region will be forced to relocate to points south or go the way of the polar bear.

As the Arctic continues to melt, the rest of the world will suffer greatly. The earth will get hotter as the protective cooling effect of permanent ice disappears. Sea levels will rise eroding coastal communities and eventually submerging them altogether.

This world is witnessing the effects of global warming even though some of our more prominent world leaders refuse to believe that it's happening. And these same world leaders are encouraging and even demanding that their countries continue to contribute to the great Arctic meltdown. Instead of leading the way in developing cleaner and less destructive energy sources, they set their sights on plant and wildlife sanctuaries located in the very part of the world that's already in the greatest and most immediate danger in search of the very fossil fuels which when burned in automobiles, homes and factories, create global warming. The more they burn, the quicker the Arctic melts.

The more they explore and drill, the quicker that wildlife like caribou and musk oxen and polar bears disappear. The next time one of you climbs into your SUV and heads off for a Sunday afternoon drive after a stop at the local gas station to top up your tank, ask yourself this - is your SUV getting 8 mpg (miles per gallon) or would it be more accurate to say that your SUV is getting 8 spg (species per gallon)?

One more point to ponder - the proposed oil drilling in the Alaskan Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is predicted by the United States Geological Survey to generate enough gas and oil to accomodate the United States for a period of only 12 - 16 months. Is a year and a half worth the extinction of even one wildlife species?



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