The Relevance of ANWR?

Ramesh responds:

I agree that by itself ANWR is not the stuff presidential elections turns on. But widen the lens a little bit and look at energy policy as a whole. A candidate who wanted to allow drilling in ANWR and other restricted areas and opposed increasing energy prices to fight global warming would have, all else equal, a political advantage over a candidate who opposed drilling and supported cap-and-trade. That's what is driving the frustration on the Right with McCain right now, and the political judgment that underlies that frustration seems to me to be correct: He is missing a good opportunity.

Point taken. But McCain's embrace of cap-and-trade didn't happen in a vacuum: It was an attempt, albeit a misguided one, to break with the heads-in-the-sand approach to energy and climate change that far too many conservatives have been taking for far too long. And the right-wing zeal for drilling in ANWR has been part of the problem, not part of the solution: It's licensed conservatives to posture about energy independence while sidestepping the global-warming debate entirely. If the argument for drilling in ANWR were embedded in a broader Jim Manzi-meets-Shellenberger-and-Nordhaus approach to the dual imperatives of cheaper and cleaner energy, then I'd be all for it. But for the most part, that isn't how it's being framed. It's just "drill here, drill now, pay less," full stop. Which is bad policy and bad politics.

Comments

It will take years to get the oil, and the oil will make only the slightest blip on our energy situation, and getting the oil will destroy one of the last unspoiled places on Earth. So why do people want to drill there? Because the oil companies want it, and they want it because they will make a lot of money out of it in its brief run, and they will give some of that money to the politicians who carry their water. That's why people want to drill. And that's all you need to know about ANWR.

Posted by Freddie | June 14, 2008 5:25 PM

That's not what they said on Fox and Friends!

Posted by Bill | June 14, 2008 7:29 PM

To get a sense of what the ANWR actually looks like, and why it's important, go look at http://www.beingcaribou.com/beingcaribou/index.html

...the website run by two Canadian documentarists who actually followed the caribou in and out of the ANWR and then tried (without much success) to interest American legislators.

One of them, Karsten Heuer, also published a book by the same title: http://www.amazon.com/Being-Caribou-Five-Months-Arctic/dp/1594850100

It's good too, with more detail, but their documentary shows the land and the animals that depend on it.

Posted by Crawford Kilian | June 14, 2008 8:11 PM

It's just "drill here, drill now, pay less," full stop. Which is bad policy and bad politics.

Bad politics? When asked, 81% respond to "...we support the United States using more of its own domestic energy resources, including the oil and coal it already has here in the U.S." with a "yes." Any politician who wants to win, needs to hop aboard that train, and the sooner, the better.

As to the policy, let's talk sanity. If we'd allowed drilling ANWR when it was first found, we'd already be pumping on a daily basis a quantity of oil roughly 60% of what we import from Saudi Arabia, and possibly more -- and would continue to do so for at least 20 years, possibly more like 50. That's what the Enviros call "the slightest blip on our energy situation;" they're just, plain, flat-out lying. And aside from the fact that drilling doesn't really spoil anything -- they have to put up fences to keep the caribou away -- the Alaska wilderness is the size of the entire eastern US, and the area they want to drill is the size of a small county. There is not a single, sane argument for why that oil should not be developed -- except for knee-jerk, emotion-laden nonsense.

Drilling ANWR, and drilling offshore, is the only sane policy, and it's good politics to boot.

Posted by Plumb Bob | June 14, 2008 9:49 PM

ANWR is a superb debating point for those on both sides of the issue. Since the place is four hours north by plane, few people have actually seen it and thus, proponents and opponents of opening ANWR can say anything they want about it. Even that it's America's Serengeti, this in spite of the fact that NPR-Alaska, to the west, is far more environmentally diverse and sensitive and was nonetheless opened to oil drilling some years ago with little outcry from the environmental community or public debate. Basically, ANWR is a fund-raising tool.

They should open ANWR to drilling. The area they plan to drill is miniscule compared to the vastness of ANWR. If there's any oil there, it will allow them to keep the Alaska pipeline running, a precursor to tapping the immense reserves of natural gas beneath the oil beds when the oil runs out.

ANWR is not a cure-all to the nation's energy needs but it's a sensible development of domestic supplies while the nation figures out some way to wean itself off of oil. That is NOT going to happen overnight. Otherwise the cities of the Midwest and Northeast, who depend on oil for heating and are loudest to oppose ANWR, would even now be working on hydropower and nukes.

Posted by DrewShaw | June 14, 2008 9:55 PM

First of all, I don't need lectures in integrity from people who take the most implausibly optimistic estimates of ANWR's reserves, and the environmental damage that would be wrought in obtaining that oil, and proceed from there.

Here's my question: what on earth is the point of designating areas wildlife preserves, national parks, or similar, if we're simply going to shed the constraints of those designations as soon as it becomes useful? What can calling something a wildlife preserve possibly mean if it makes no difference in our policy? You're talking about rendering governmental conventions utterly meaningless and abandoning any dedication to consistent and coherent definitions of what government means. Why not just stripmine Yosemite? What's the difference?

Posted by Freddie | June 14, 2008 10:28 PM

For one thing, Yosemite National Park is much closer to where people live. Three and a half million people visit Yosemite every year. That area ought to be protected, in part as a showcase for nature.

In fact, the last place we should allow drilling for oil in the United States is where we’ve allowed it for more than a century, in Texas and California, where 59 million people now live. The first place we should allow oil drilling is northeastern Alaska, where about 200 people live.

We have to end our insane policy of sending hundreds of billions of petrodollars to mischief-makers in Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Russia and, indirectly, Iran. We should be pumping our own oil from the untapped reserves in Alaska and on the outer continental shelf.

The “wildlife” in ANWR is a few caribou and mosquitoes. If the North Slope is any indication, those reindeer and bugs will continue to do fine with oil operations. We, the people, are in greater need of a National Human Life Refuge. The best way to protect us is to find more domestic oil, and to drill and pump it where the drilling affects us least.

Posted by Deer editor | June 14, 2008 11:49 PM

Drilling in ANWR will do approximately jacksquat for the whole problem of oil consumption in this country. How about asking the Oil Companies why they are sitting on so many leases off the coasts that they refuse to drill? If McCain were the kind of person who could ask that, well, he wouldn't be doomed to a blowout in November.

Posted by Little Boots | June 15, 2008 12:37 AM

Just because Jimmy Carter and a band of New Englander Congress proclaimed much of Alaska sacred and off-limits to all but elite lawyers of Baston and SF academics kayaking and some of the locals "traditionally" killing wildlfe for dogfood - doesn't make the land "inviolable on Jimmy Carter's say so because he renamed it!!"

We have a number of oil, gas wells, pipelines, mines, even transfer on a temporaray basis to the miitary for use. In 2000, 77 of 567 National Wildlfe Refuges had vital human activity - mostly oil and gas.

From Dept of Interior to one of the Mass Lawyers who got Carter to do it. Anti-any energy source Ed Markey: Seventy-seven of the 567 units--about 14 percent--of the National Wildlife Refuge
System had oil or gas activities on their land in calendar year 2000. These units are
located in 22 states and distributed through all seven regions of the Fish and Wildlife
Service. The states of Louisiana, with 19 units, and Texas, with 11 units, had the most
units with oil or gas activity.

And ANWR had Section 1002 specifically set aside for possible future oil and gas exploration back in 1980, knowing there were hundred of billions of dollars of oil there and enough jobs that the locals stop killing caribou.

It is also pretty sucky up there. 6 months you freeze, 2 months are't too bad but that is the time that things warm up before the millions of bog acres infested with mosquito, black fly, tundra fly and ticks hatch out, or the month that you don't freeze yet but the insect vermin died down in a cold snap. Under 1,000 Americans visit it, the whole place, and over half that are people that have to be paid to go to that place.

General observations.

1. Few things are more insipid than environmental activists claims that is stupid to drill because it takes 10 years. An argument they used back in 1989 to block Reagan, same argument made by Clinton when he vetoed it in 1995, same case made by Teddy and the New Englanders in 2002 when they said drilling was "insane" because it would be 2010 or 2012 before all the Saudi oil America consumed was swapped for USA stuff. Of course the "we can't build nukes because it takes too long" argument ranks up there - especially against advocacy for more R&D instead for "new, exciting renewables" postulated to perhaps be available in 20-30 years to be contributing in small amounts.

2. The other argument is that any solution to a problem should not be pursued unless that single solution handles the whole problem by itself. Thus ANWR is stupid and shouldn't be done because it would only add 6-9% to US oil for 35+ years - not solve all energy needs on its own. Same with drilling offshore, using coal, shale oil...each must be rejected, environmentalists say, because they cannot solve all our demand individually.

But of course, with solar and wind...why...every little bit helps and should be pursued. That's obvious!

As part of that masterful display of illogic, the claim has been made that being 30% on foreign oil energy (after ANWR and 1-2 large offshore fields are found, plus 10% conservation) is as bad as being 73% dependent, thus not worth it. But if we were at 30% dependency, we could do emergency conservation and have about two year's supply in the strategic reserve - vs. two months now.

3. Environmentalists say no new energy because it is a right of the people of a State to play NIMBY. Except when the people of the State want to get more exploration and jobs going. Then New Englanders tell N Dakotoans, Alaskans, and Wyoming folk that what they want doesn't matter - it's Federal land and seas in "Federal Trust" that won't be touched unless New Englanders change their minds.

4. The 1995 and 2002 energy efforts tried to get a bipartisan agreement by accepting conservation mandates if the anti-energy people let exploration happen again. CAFE standards, etc. The better 1995 effort foundered on "no more drilling, ever" absolutism. The 2002 one on Bush pulling back the amount of conservation measures that was in the 1995 bill before anti-drilling forces got CLinton's veto...so they were outraged that Bush wouldn't repeat the 1995 offer...and of course all the environmental hardliners still saying ANY offshore, drilling in Alaska, new refineries, NEW nukes...was unacceptable.

5. The people that are the obstructionists over the last 30 years are pretty well known. West Coast, New England, Mid-Atlantic States. Dodd, House chair Markey, Kerry, Kennedy, Schumer,Stowe, Lieberman, Lautenberg, Spector, Boxer, McCain.
Same people that increase our dependency on ME oil, but who are also the strongest advocates of abandoning the region, while also being from the States with the lowest enlistment rates into the Armed Forces.
There is strong sentiment that in another energy crisis, stuff Coloradans and Indianians and Texans get stay in the producing states, and the environmentalist-dominated states should be at the end of the line.

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Posted by chris ford | June 15, 2008 2:07 AM

All I'll add is that preserving the energy option goes back a lot farther than the Carter administration. The Eisenhower administration designated the place in the 50s, reserving the right to consider energy development in 20 years. That time came, then people started howling it would destroy the refuge. So it's not a sudden reversal.

Finally, the arctic plain that is ANWR extends eastward into Canada. Canada made plans to develop their half but abandoned it when its wells came up dry. They then designated theirs a preserve and began criticizing us for wanting to drill in ANWR.

Posted by DrewShaw | June 15, 2008 7:12 AM

For once, I agree with Ross:

But for the most part, that isn't how it's being framed. It's just "drill here, drill now, pay less," full stop. Which is bad policy and bad politics.

If only conservatives actually began living up to their name and "conserving."

And if only conservatives put half as much energy into promoting entrepreneurial alternatives to oil. . .

One can dream.

Posted by zic | June 15, 2008 10:12 AM

The silly assumption being made here is that oil drilled from ANWR would be used domestically, rather than sold on the open market, like all other oil drilled everywhere in the world.

Posted by Mike | June 15, 2008 11:03 AM

And the right-wing zeal for drilling in ANWR has been part of the problem, not part of the solution: It's licensed conservatives to posture about energy independence while sidestepping the global-warming debate entirely.

You think the problem lies in avoiding acknowledgement of global warming? The real problem lies in avoiding acknowledgement of the limitations of ANWR - at maximum capacity, its been determined that ANWR drilling would fulfill only a small fraction of our needs. Conservative boilerplate regarding ANWR lies on some imagined sweet crude Canaan lying just north of us; unfortunately, the reality doesn't square with this, making the posturing all the more deluded and absurd.

Posted by concerning the trolled | June 15, 2008 2:08 PM

Ross writes:

And the right-wing zeal for drilling in ANWR has been part of the problem, not part of the solution

and

It's just "drill here, drill now, pay less," full stop. Which is bad policy and bad politics.

To which I say:

Of course we should drill or oil there. Which, of course, is what Ross wrote IN THE PREVIOUS POST.

Posted by ed | June 15, 2008 9:05 PM

Maybe bad politics, but can you elaborate on how its bad energy policy?

It is not the job of the exploration team to come up with alternate sources of energy or figure ways to use energy more efficiently.

It is the job of the exploration team to find it, and the job of the drillers to drill for it.

It is the job of the research and development people to find alternate sources of energy.

You are the one espousing bad policy, confusing exploration with research and development of new technolgies.

We do not stop progress on what will help us in the short term because someone else is working on something that might hopefully make a difference in the long term.

Posted by sam | June 16, 2008 11:31 AM

We do not stop progress on what will help us in the short term because someone else is working on something that might hopefully make a difference in the long term.

That is an excellent point. Someone should tell that to those stupid, non-believing redskins who oppose drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, claiming, among other nonsense, that it's "sacred ground." Sheesh, there's no pleasing some people.

Posted by ed | June 16, 2008 1:01 PM

I am disappointed and appalled that the earlier post found it necessary to resort to racist name- calling and prejudiced views regarding the views of Native Americans from Canada and Alaska.

The Episcopal Church supports protecting the coastal plain of the Arctic Refuge on behalf of the human rights of the Gwich'in, having been requested to take this position by their Gwich'in parishoners who depend on the Porcupine caribou herd.

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge has been set aside for 50 years. Its coastal plain is the only part of Alaska's North Slope protected by law from oil and gas exploration and development. There is 50-years more oil that will flow from the existing leased areas where there are known oil fields on the Alaskan North Slope -- without going into the Arctic Refuge and other sensitive places. The area where the big oil corporations push to drill is the biological heart of the refuge.

Posted by Pam | June 18, 2008 10:06 PM