Betraying Stewardship

This unbelievably insulting dreck appeared in this morning's Inquirer.

Go north to Alaska and tap oil reserves

Gale A. Norton is the U.S. secretary of the interior

America is ignoring the light on the dashboard when it comes to energy.

We are in denial. We think that simply because we've always had abundant energy - except in the 1970s, when we were stuck in gas lines - we always will.

Americans were surprised when growing world demand for energy pushed the price of oil to record levels last summer and when Hurricanes Katrina and Rita drove gas above $3.60 a gallon in some places. We shouldn't have been. The warning signs of an energy crunch have been there all along.

It's time for denial to end.

So clever, so cute…so uproariously deceitful to somehow blame us for buying the gas-guzzling monstrosities that the automakers continually foist on us while our politicians refuse to fund mass-transit alternatives properly or support research and development into alternative sources of energy. So insultingly propagandistic to ignore the price gouging of the oil companies with Bushco’s blessing as a major factor in this present mess.

As interior secretary, I oversee public lands that hold vast amounts of oil and natural gas that the energy industry has proved can be produced in an environmentally safe manner.

Where have they done this? What is their documentation? What is their “credible and expert research” that proves that this can be accomplished?

As we've become more and more dependent on foreign oil, America has left this oil and gas untapped because of environmental concerns often based in emotion and not in fact.

Following Norton’s column at this post is information from Robert Kennedy Jr. that tells a wholly other story about this.

Take the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a potentially huge source of oil and gas. In 1980, President Carter and Congress set aside this remote coastal plain for oil and gas development.

Of all of Norton’s disingenuous remarks, this may be the worst. As you can read from this link:

"First set aside by President Eisenhower in 1960 as the Arctic National Wildlife Range, the area now known as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge was created in 1980 when President Carter signed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act. The legislation expanded the refuge and expressly prohibited oil drilling in the 1.5 million acre coastal plain, the area currently debated for oil drilling."

On Nov. 10, a measure to allow oil drilling in ANWR was dropped from a congressional budget bill. But we can and must develop this area for our energy needs, and I look forward to seeing the provision reinstated in House/Senate negotiations later this year.

By the way, based on the scientific evidence that I’ve read, the maximum amount of oil that could be taken from the ANWR would meet the energy needs of this country for about six months. This is at a cost of the potential extinction of scores of other species in the area.

Using modern technology, the oil industry can develop this area in winter with little environmental impact.

Again, see Robert Kennedy’s note below about this statement.

No one would say there won't be any impact at all. Rather, we can limit the footprint of development to an area the size of a regional airport in a refuge the size of South Carolina.

“The footprint of development,” huh? "Refuge in a regional airport"? "Size of South Carolina"? Could you try harder to baffle us, Madame Secretary?

Sorry, but I'm a very literal guy. I don't know what the hell you're talking about, and I need a picture.

Had we developed this area in the mid-1990s, Americans would have access to the oil from it today.

Sure we could have, assuming of course that we hadn’t already used it up by now.

Unfortunately, emotional arguments and our denial over energy have carried the day for a quarter-century. Opponents show pictures of Alaska, such as the scenic Brooks Range, that aren't even in the coastal plain area, to claim that energy development will despoil a natural wonder. They claim widespread harm to caribou populations, but U.S. Geological Survey studies and experience in other producing areas of Alaska's North Slope indicate responsible development will have little impact on caribou populations. They ignore the incredible technological advances in oil production.

At this point, given Norton’s penchant for data manipulation to suit her predetermined conclusions (as Robert Kennedy Jr. dramatically illustrates later), I don’t trust anything she has to say about how the environment won’t be harmed by “incredible technological advances in oil production.”

Likewise, consider the Outer Continental Shelf, which contains huge amounts of recoverable oil and gas that can be easily accessed. Currently, the vast majority of the OCS is off limits to production because of congressional moratoria and presidential withdrawals. Deferring to the wishes of coastal states, President Bush supports the continuation of these moratoria and withdrawals. However, some promising OCS areas not under moratorium or withdrawal could produce billions of barrels of oil and trillions of cubic feet of natural gas.

Where are these areas, exactly (oh, and isn't Dubya a nice guy for deciding to honor historical precedent and the wishes of our government for many years?).

Offshore oil and gas production has been proven safe. In fact, more than 150 times the amount of oil seeps into the Gulf of Mexico from natural cracks in the seabed than is spilled from offshore production facilities.

Furthermore, these offshore wells endured the rage of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita without any significant spills.

Norton ought to check this link and read the information. I don't know how she defines "significant."

Amazingly, opponents still use the memory of the 1970 Santa Barbara oil spill to convince people to misrepresent the environmental risks in 2005. Again, they ignore the major advances in technology akin to what has happened in fields such as space exploration, medicine, and electronics.

Development of these technologies will not harm the environment to the same degree as oil drilling and exploration.

On shore, areas such as the Rocky Mountains potentially hold huge reserves of natural gas that can be developed in an environmentally sensitive manner through coal bed methane technologies. Environmental and energy policies of both Republican and Democratic administrations, dating back more than a decade, have supported development of this clean-burning fuel.

As already noted, Norton has a legendary reputation for altering or suppressing scientific data if it conflicts with her predetermined conclusions, which is perfectly in synch with Bushco's lunatic logic. She probably could point to a flawed study to support this paragraph also.

Update 11/20: I meant to come back to this and find out more information, and I came across this (excerpted below):

"'Most of the oil has been pumped out of the Rocky Mountain West. What's left is gas—conventional and coal-bed methane. With the latter, a technology barely 15 years old and therefore an experiment on public resources, you have to bust up the coal seam and pump out groundwater contaminated with a witch's brew of toxins and carcinogens. Ranchers aren't safe even if they graze their own land because, in virtually all cases, subsurface mineral rights were sold or leased to gas and oil companies at least half a century ago. The companies routinely drill in front yards and backyards. A recent study reveals that if you have a gas well within 500 feet of your house, your property value declines 22 percent.

'These guys made $4.5 billion in San Juan County last year,' continued (Tweeti) Blancett (an area rancher). 'But they barely do any site restoration; they want everything. And in the San Juan Basin there are three BLM enforcement agents to cover 35,000 wells. We either have droughts or gully washers, so when you disturb desert soil and don't revegetate, you lose it. This whole county is a disaster area. Our water is polluted; our air is polluted; our ground is polluted. They've ruined our ranch. With $4.5 billion coming out of one county in one year, New Mexico ought to be the richest state, not one of the poorest'.”

America certainly needs to do better on the energy conservation front. We rose to the challenge and became more energy efficient after the 1970s energy crisis. We must do so again. In an important step, the administration has proposed to raise mileage requirements for light trucks and SUVs in 2007, a decision that will save 10 billion gallons in gasoline over a four-year period.

As Arianna notes here, SUVs were held to a ridiculously low fuel standard anyway, even beneath that of passenger vehicles (which is what an SUV really is, after all). And I'm not even going to try and fathom the specious reasoning that assumes we'll automatically save gas because of "an administration proposal."

However, the need to do more for conservation does not obviate the need to tap into readily available energy resources. At a time when our domestic energy production is less than half of our consumption and falling each year, we don't have the luxury to ignore large oil and gas reserves on American soil. We must not let unfounded environmental concerns stand in the way.

"Unfounded environmental concerns"...it's almost funny at this point.

Time to get out of denial. We must produce more oil and gas at home. We can do so while protecting our environment.

Of all of the Bushco screeds that I have had the great displeasure to read since Dubya was installed into the White House in January 2001, this could possibly be the most outrageous and despicable one yet. I actually think I could have picked it apart some more if I had the time to do more research. I feel like I need a hot shower to cleanse myself now.

Here, at long last is an excerpt from Robert Kennedy Jr. (from the U.S. Message Board, posted October 28, 2004):

The (Bush) administration’s leading expert in manipulating scientific data is Interior Secretary Gale Norton. During her nomination hearings, Norton promised not to ideologically slant agency science. But as her friend, Thomas Sansonetti, a coal-industry lobbyist who is now assistant attorney general, predicted, “There won’t be any biologists or botanists to come in and pull the wool over her eyes.”

In Autumn 2001, Secretary Norton provided the senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources with her agency’s scientific assessment that Arctic oil drilling would not harm hundreds of thousands of caribou. Not long afterward, fish and Wildlife Service biologists contacted the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, which defends scientists and other professionals working in state and federal environmental agencies. “The scientists provided us the science that they had submitted to Norton and the altered version that she had given to Congress a week later,” said the group’s executive director, Jeff Ruch. There were seventeen major substantive changes, all of them minimizing the reported impacts. When Norton was asked about the alterations in October 2001, she dismissed them as typographical errors.

Later, she and White House political adviser Karl Rove forced National Marine Fisheries scientists to alter findings on the amount of water required of the survival of salmon in Oregon ’s Klamath River , to ensure that large corporate farms got a bigger share of the river water. As a result, more than 33,000 chinook and coho salmon died—the largest fish kill in the history of America. Mike Kelly, the biologist who drafted the original opinion (and who has since been awarded federal whistle-blower status), told me that the coho salmon is probably headed for extinction. “Morale is low among scientists here,” Kelly says. “We are under pressure to get the right results. This administration is putting the species at risk for political gain—and not just in the Klamath.”

Norton has also ordered the rewriting of an exhaustive twelve-year study by federal biologists detailing the effects that Arctic drilling would have on populations of musk oxen and snow geese. She reissued the biologists’ report two weeks later as a two-page paper showing no negative impact to wildlife. She also ordered suppression of two studies by the Fish and Wildlife Service concluding that the drilling would threaten polar-bear populations and violate the international treaty protecting bears. She then instructed the Fish and Wildlife Service to redo the report to “reflect the Interior department’s position.” She suppressed findings that mountaintop mining would cause “tremendous destruction of aquatic and terrestrial habitat” and a Park Service report that found that snowmobiles were hurting Yellowstone ’s air quality, wildlife and the health of its visitors and employees.

Norton’s Fish and Wildlife Service is the first ever not to voluntarily list a single species as endangered or threatened. Her officials have blackballed scientists and savaged studies to avoid listing the trumpeter swan, revoke the listing of the grizzly bear and shrink the remnant habitat for the Florida panther. She disbanded the service’s oldest scientific advisory committee in order to halt protection of desert fish in Arizona, New Mexico and Texas that are headed for extinction. Interior career staffers and scientists say they are monitored by Norton’s industry appointees to ensure that future studies do not conflict with industry profit-making.

Update 11/20: By the way, in an unrelated item, here is a post about Kennedy's dad.

As I’ve said before, this is easily the most environmentally hostile presidential administration that I have ever had to endure in all of the years that God has granted me on this earth thus far. For this reason first and foremost above all others, we must fight these bastards with all of our strength and ability until their time is finally and mercifully over.