The White House is turning its attention to the House in hopes of salvaging a key part of the president's energy strategy. Republicans fell two votes shy in the Senate of passing the legislation that could lead to removal of a 43-year-old ban on developing millions of barrels of oil from the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
If 99.9999999% of Americans will never get the opportunity to see this land, then why "protect it." Shouldn't we spend our money to protect land that people can visit? Isn't the whole purpose of conservation letting people enjoy the natural undeveloped lands? Or is conservation just protecting land just for the sake of protecting land? I know there is a religious faction of the environmental movement that sees the untouched earth as holy, but are they driving the whole environmental movement?
Resources are scarce and when we spend money to protect land or when we forgo the mining of natural resources we are spending scarce resources. We can’t protect everything, so therefore when we choose to protect the Alaskan Wilderness we are sacrificing the protection of something that more people can actually use. And doesn’t it make sense to drill for our oil as far away from civilization as possible? People here want to ban drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, because it is too close to our beaches. ANWR seems heaven sent for people who like visiting National Parks and hate to have drilling close to home.
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