Congress used to have an independent non-partisan group of scientists responsible for evaluating these issues for courts with little or no experience. It was disbanded and I am not sure who is responsible for it now.

Personally I think it would be a mistake to open ANWR for drilling if only because the president has promised us to work on hydrogen fuel... we need to focus on that. Oil will run out eventually; the people and country who invent the best replacement first will be the superpower of the next century.
joseph thorne rainmound | Homepage | 12.22.05 - 11:18 am | #

Uh, ANWR drilling only consist of a few thousand acres for exploratory drilling. http://www.anwr.org/topten.htm


As for oil, that will eventually run out, try several hundred years or longer. Not 10, 20, 100 years. Why? well, for example, shale oil in Wyoming and Colorado which are not being mined (if very little) at all due to the cost of oil extraction and limited technology know how to make it an efficient extraction process but that's changing now with the increase in oil prices and better technology. Anyhow, the amount of oil in those shale rocks is estimated to be around a trillion barrels of oil....more than Saudia Arabia or Iraq. It makes sense to invest in the United States for these type of resources because we can do these in an environmentally-sounding practice where we must adhere to environmental laws. In Saudia Arabia, Venezuela, Mexico and such, theirs are not as stringent.

It's the NIMBY syndrome and partisan politics (mostly environemental wackos and uncompromising liberals that are stopping this. Even the wind turbines off of the coast of Massachussetts that Ted Kennedy is fiercely against, even though it's like 10 miles out in the shallow ocean waters, barely visible from the beach coastlines and very clean energy.

If we want to have less foreign oil dependency, we should drill more in the United States and combine our technology for alternative source of energy in the process. This includes oil drilling off the coast of California and Florida, and anywhere else. ANWR oil drilling and shale oil and sand oil mining. We produce nearly 60 percent of our own oil domestically. The rest is foreign oil with Canada being number one and the Middle East being number four on the list.
mcconnell | Homepage | 12.22.05 - 11:40 am | #

DRILL at home! And isn't Ted Kennedy big enough to use as a wind turbine?
Sherry | 12.22.05 - 5:32 pm | #