drilled again

once, before he blew his brains out, kurt cobain said "...mother nature is a whore."

there's probably no connection, but the u.s. senate confirmed nature's status today, voting to drill the arctic national wildlife refuge like a cheap hooker.

"We've got to use our technology to over time evolve away from reliance upon oil and gas, and at the same time use our technologies to make sure we can use our plentiful resources, like coal, in an environmentally friendly way."

who said that? why, george bush, of course. let the record show that george bush doesn't give a damn about the environment, or evolving away from oil and gas. not to mention that there's no such thing as evolution.

Republicans hailed the Senate's vote on the ANWR provision as a major step after 24 years of efforts to open the wildlife refuge for drilling.

it is! it is a major step...toward stuffing the pockets of bush's cronies in the gas & oil bidness.

Interior Secretary Gale Norton has said the first leases could not be issued until 2007, and that it would take another seven to 10 years to develop the sites and produce oil.

speaking of whores, gale norton has got to be wetting herself over the prospect of trashing a perfectly good wilderness. it's not like she's a fox in charge of the henhouse. it's more like she's a crack addict with her own meth lab, if i might mix a metaphor and a socially unacceptable, mutually destructive habit.

Arctic drilling is a central component of President Bush's energy policy. "This project will keep our economy growing by creating jobs and ensuring that businesses can expand," Mr. Bush said, "and it will make America less dependent on foreign sources of energy."

this last bit is actually fairly important. because tapping every barrel of oil in anwr will have zero (0) impact on u.s. reliance on foreign energy sources. none. have i mentioned recently that george bush is a grotesque, unrepentant liar?

Proponents of drilling in the Arctic Refuge claim that massive amounts of oil are to be found underneath the Refuge's fragile coastal plain. They often quote an inflated figure of "technically recoverable oil" that might lie beneath the coastal plain. This is the amount of oil that could be recovered without any regard to cost. This figure does not take into account the actual cost of bringing the oil to domestic markets. When economic factors are considered, the mean amount of economically recoverable oil drops to just 3.2 billion barrels. The cost of drilling in the Arctic Refuge is so high, in fact, that the U.S. Geological Service (USGS) says if the price of oil fell to $16 a barrel, there would actually be NO economically recoverable oil in the coastal plain.

alaska's two senators, ted stevens and lisa murkowski, are giddy. the dollar signs in their eyes are lighting them up like a bright oil-burning lights burning brightly in the alaskan wilderness. it'd be kind of cute if it weren't so disturbing and distasteful. the two of them are bathed in enough petrochemical slime to keep them lubed up for any kind of activity where lubrication is required for more than four hours.

does all this sound like unsupported liberal bias? golly, i can't have that. let's see what the u.s. geological survey says!

The USGS estimated:

a 95 percent probability that at least 5.7 billion barrels of technically recoverable undiscovered oil are in the ANWR coastal plain
a 5 percent probability that at least 16 billion barrels of technically recoverable undiscovered oil are in the ANWR coastal plain
a mean or expected value of 10.3 billion barrels of technically recoverable undiscovered oil in the ANWR coastal plain.

there's that phrase again. "technically recoverable." which, as we've seen above, amounts to 3.2 billion barrels of oil.

What do 3.2 billion barrels of oil mean to Americans who are concerned about our dependence on foreign oil, particularly from the Middle East? Consider this: Each day, the United States consumes about 19.5 million barrels of oil, an annual total of about 7 billion barrels each year 2. Given this rate of consumption, if Arctic oil was our nation's only source, it would fuel America's demand for less than 6 months.

there it is ladies and germs. the u.s. senate has sold its soul, sold us out, sold conjugal visitation rights to anwr, for a six-month fuel supply.

not to mention that the senate went outside procedural boundaries to get this transaction past the vice squad. see, ordinarily the effort to deflower anwr would've been susceptible to filibuster, which drilling opponents have used to defeat such proposals in the past. this time, however, republicans attached the proposal to the federal budget, which is not subject to filibuster.

Senate Republicans were ebullient after the vote. "Another example of where the strength of the majority matters," said Senator George Allen, Republican of Virginia.

actually, george, a poll last december said that americans favored keeping drilling out of anwr, 55% to 38%. but don't let that get in the way of your gloat-fest.

looking forward: as a matter of bush energy policy, we can forget about conservation, higher mileage standards for the auto industry, and development of alternate energy sources. who needs 'em?

for that matter, who needs a conscience when mother nature is spread out before us, ready to be drilled?