Vote on Alaska National wildlife Refuge coming soo

Vote on Alaka National Wildlife Refuge Bill, Help Needed:<br><br>In just a few short weeks, Congress will decide the fate of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The final vote to save the nation's greatest wildlife sanctuary from harmful oil drilling is set for September.<br><br>As you may recall, in very close votes, the House (by three votes) and the Senate (by five votes) paved the way for drilling in the budget resolution last spring. Now, right after Labor Day, the House and the Senate will each vote on the Budget Reconciliation Bill, the piece of legislation that will officially make drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge legal. Defenders of Wildlife is determined to defeat this bill.<br><br>The Arctic Refuge is such a special place because it is home to countless wildlife -- from the great predators like the polar bear to the Porcupine Herd, one of the largest caribou herds in North America. We need to remember that if the Arctic Refuge is industrialized, we will have lost one of our nation's greatest national treasures. Is that the kind of legacy we want to leave our future generations?<br><br>Defenders of Wildlife is doing all we can protect the Arctic Refuge from harmful oil drilling. From the halls of Congress, to the editorial pages of our nation's newspapers, to towns across America, and most importantly, with people like you, Defenders is working hard to educate and mobilize citizens about defeating the September Budget Reconciliation bill. Without your help, we can't win this battle!<br><br>WHAT YOU CAN DO:<br><br>Now more than ever, we need people like you to contact their members of Congress and urge that they vote to REJECT the Budget Reconciliation Bill that threatens to legalize drilling in the Arctic Refuge. Please go to www.SaveArcticRefuge.org and send your message TODAY.

Second, please consider joining thousands of Americans in Washington, DC on September 20th as they lobby their Senators and members of Congress to reject the Budget Reconciliation bill that threatens the Arctic Refuge! For more, please visit www.ArcticRefugeAction.com .

Together, we can win this vote and stop the destruction of one of nation's greatest wildlife sanctuaries. Thanks for all of your continued support!

Remeber the pipeline? Remember how that was going to destroy Alaska and all it did is cause an explosion in animal population growth....... Development is not always a bad thing.<br><br>Drilling would only affect 8% at the most of the millions of acres of arctic land. Its time to develop our own oil source and not be held hostage by other countries. The need for oil is not going away any time soon so we might as well get it from our own country rather then Mexico and the middle east. <br><br>Just my thoughts......

I've had the pleasure of going to the North Slope on several occasions and an Industrial wasteland it ain't.  During the summer, thousands of Caribou line up to take advantage of the shadow cast by the pipe line.  Artic fox, ravens, musk ox, even polar bears are seen in and around the complex that makes up the North Slope.<br><br>For good reasons, environmental controls at the Slope are somewhat over the top.  For example, when a worker parks a vehicle for more than an hour or so, there's a procedure that entails placing a large flat pan (~ 2X3 feet) lined with a fiber mat.  If there are more than a few drips of oil on the material, the driver is required to fill out an environmental impact sheet describing how the "accident" took place.  And that's the minor stuff.  Workers absolutely cringe at the notion of spilling anything liquid there given the punitive nature of the filling out the volume of paperwork to explain the circumstance of an accident.  Intelligent people put controls in place in the early 70's, and they work to keep the place environmentally safe and sound.<br><br>An industrial complex conjures up images of 19th century Pittsburg, or current day South Korea/India/Indonesia/Mexico (I've been to these places-trust me, this is where the focus should be).  But the reality of the North Slope is yes, there are complexes, but they're highly contained, well run, clean facilities (clean because everyone is so friggin paranoid about dropping anything).  And the buildings there are anything but close together.   With modern directional drilling, drilling structures and pump houses will be few and far between due to the far reach of the drilling process.  So the focus should not be this absolutely vast, flat empty space (btw, there are no trees there!), it should be on developing alternative fuels to reduce emissions not for so called global warming, but rather for clean air we all need.  <br><br>Like it or not, we're all going to need fossil fuel to produce all the synthetics that make modern life what it is today, and if we create a few thousand jobs in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska to help pay for the social programs we all get to support, so much the better!<br>

You paint a picture the oil industry would be proud to have portrayed: A teaspoonful sized oil spill:<br><br>However, large scale oil spills are more the norm: www.arcticwildlife.org/spills.htm

53% of the American public is still in favor of protecting ANWR, which was established by a forward thinking Dwight Eisenhower in the days when it was OK to be a Republican politicain and an environmentalist.

Does the Public Support ANWR Oil Exploration? In the wake of the recent narrow Senate vote in favor opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to oil exploration, it is worth asking whether public opinion now supports the approach adopted by the Senate. In a word: no. Very recent data from Gallup (March 7&#8211;10) show that the public still opposes such exploration in ANWR by 53 percent to 42 percent, rising to 58 percent to 37 percent among political independents. Moreover, the intensity of feeling is heavily on the opposition side. Just 19 percent say that oil drilling should proceed and that they&#8217;ll be upset if it does not. But 45 percent&#8212;a gap in intensity of twenty-six points&#8212;say that oil drilling should not proceed and that they&#8217;ll be upset if it does. And among independents that intensity gap is even larger: 48 percent to 14 percent, for a gap of thirty-four points.

Unfortunately, those controls put in place in the 1970s are very much in the sights of the same people who are trying to drill ANWR. <br><br>Laws such as NEPA are under "review" thanks to W's administration, and may not make it..

During the last two months I have participated in a University of Washington Program on the Environment field course that has explored the issues surrounding drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). I recently returned from two weeks in Alaska and the Refuge meeting people with diverse perspectives on the debate. Our group met with Gwich?in and Inupiak Native Alaskans, ecologists, historians, petroleum geologists, even representatives from Senators Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Maria Cantwell (D-WA). I also spent 8 days rafting through the Refuge and as one of only a few thousand people that actually visit the area each year feel obligated to share my lasting impressions from two months of intense immersion in the dispute.<br><br>In 1980 Congress passed the Alaska Native Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) expanding an existing conservation unit and creating the Refuge. When Congress created this South Carolina sized Refuge on the North Slope of Alaska, it included a provision that the coastal plain of its northern edge (the ?1002 area?) be analyzed for potential oil and gas resources and the impact of exploration and development. The act also dictated that the 1002 area (about ~13% of the total land of the Refuge) could only be opened to oil production by an act of Congress. Ever since then, oil interests have been trying to get the area opened to drilling and conservation interests have been battling to prevent development.<br><br>The Refuge has an inflated importance as a symbol for both pro-development and conservation interests. In 2001 former Alaska senator Frank Murkowski (now Alaska?s governor) went on the senate floor with a blank white poster board and declared that ?"this is what it (the 1002 area) looks like--don't be misinformed?. This is just not true. On our trip through the Refuge we saw and learned about the caribou, bears, foxes, beautiful flowers, and an amazing variety of life adapted to the harsh arctic environment. The 1002 is part of a wilderness that has seen almost no human impact and is an essential calving area for the ~123,000 strong Porcupine Caribou Herd. However, the Refuge is part of an area that has relatively low overall biodiversity: acre for acre many other areas of the world are more ecological diverse. Is opposition to drilling in the Refuge just a scaled up version of the not in my back yard ideology that seems to be sweeping the nation? Are environmentalists really accomplishing much for the planet if they protect the Refuge, but instead oil is drilled in Amazonian rainforest?<br><br>At times through the last two months, I have convinced myself that if a powerful environmental lobby and Congressperson proposed an aggressive land trade, maybe the issue of the Refuge could be resolved. What if the Sierra Club and Maria Cantwell proposed that the western half of the 1002 area (where most of the oil likely is) would be opened to drilling, the rest of the 1002 area (where most of the Porcupine Caribou herd calves) would be official designated as wilderness, and new wilderness areas (say in the ecologically similar National Petroleum Reserve Alaska, or the Prince Williams Sound) were created. You could even envision some Congressional deal making that would finally get Washington State?s proposed Wild Sky Wilderness through the House. To me it seemed (and still does) that environmental groups are too idealistic and if they want to get anything done they need to be pragmatic and on the offensive.<br><br>For better and for worse, I?ve come to realize that a compromise on this issue isn?t possible. Over the twenty-five year debate about opening the 1002 area for drilling, the Refuge has become a political symbol for both conservationists and pro-development interests. Conservationists worry that allowing drilling in the Refuge would set an important precedent about opening up protected areas that have natural resource potential. Even House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas), a strong development supporter, has indicated that he views the fight as an important precedent about whether energy exploration will be allowed in similarly sensitive areas.<br><br>I believe that the issue of drilling in the Refuge should be used to rally Americans to the intrinsic value of protected wilderness areas (surveys show that the majority of Americans really do value wilderness) and to alternatives to the oil based energy, transportation and consumer goods that currently support our economy. Now is a time to make a stand that says we will not go into preserved areas to remedy problems that will not go away even with all of the Refuge?s oil. Make sure to contact your state representatives with your opinion, and act in ways to cut down on your own oil dependence. It would be more than a shame to open up a beautiful pristine wilderness ecosystem for short-term oil production and consumption.<br>