Will Hillary Sue the US Congress?
Hillary apparently wants to sue OPEC for not producing enough oil. If this idea had come in via the constituent mail, Hillary's staffers would probably have laughed themselves silly, but it is an election year, and no bottom has been found below which candidates are unable to keep a straight face while uttering what they know to be nonsense.
But should Hillary be suing OPEC, or the US? Because if you ranked the world's countries on those that are doing the least to develop the most promising potential oil deposits, the US would be right at the top of that list. By Hillary's logic, Western Europe and Japan should be suing us.
JimS:
And don't forget the terrestrial "no zones" like ANWR. It's ludicrous that with roughly 45% of Alaska tied up in National Parks, wildlife reserves, National Monumsnts, wilderness areas, etc., that we can't drill in a corner of ANWR. (PS, I'm an Alaskan, and in agreement with the majority here in Alaska. However to environmentalists we are seen the same way as colonial area Africans or Asians were seen by Europeans, silly children that don't know what's in our best interest.)
May 1, 2008, 10:26 amtribal elder:
If I recall, Walter Williams once suggested oil companies put video screens showing the carefree caribou in ANWR, so at least we'd see the benefit (?) from for not using the available oil.
May 1, 2008, 12:53 pmMike:
From what I hear, Alaskans (including Native American tribes) want to drill for oil in Alaska. They see the benefit from the influx of cash. The same holds true for copper mining here in Arizona. When the price of copper goes up, the local economy benefits. With newer mining methods and technology, mining is cleaner from an environmental aspect now that it ever has in the industry's past.
May 1, 2008, 1:10 pmla petite chou chou:
The ANWR is a subject of interest for me, too. I wrote an article for a school paper about why we should be drilling up there back about 6 years ago at this point. On top of that I wrote a letter to the editor of the other school paper on the same subject.
It still doesn't make sense to me how they managed to wrestle away something like 1.6 million acres that were designated specifically for oil exploration.
Anyway, I hear that the animals up there like to hang out by the pipelines because it gives them warmth in the winter.
May 2, 2008, 11:07 pmmodel_1066:
I have worked in oil exploration for about 13 years now, and have worked in the Alaskan arctic enough to learn a few things about this issue. Most Alaskans, including natives, indeed want to open the most promising sections of ANWR to exploration. It is a very tiny area of the coastal plain in a part of a 'wildlife reserve' the size of Minnesota. My biggest concern (and I admit it might be unfounded, as I'm not hep to details about the state of the pipeline, but state and pipeline officals have voiced similar concerns), is that the transalaskan pipeline is aging and might not be functional decades down the road if/when we do agree that ANWR should be tapped. It has already transported around 14.5 billion barrels to Valdez with hardly an incident, except for the time some drunk douchebag north of Fairbanks decided to use it for target practice back in 2000.
May 3, 2008, 9:39 pm