Oil cowboys to trash the Arctic

US Senate voted narrowly to open the Arctic reserve for oil drilling.

While Britain has a Royal Family, one of whom is on a come-back tour of the States and telling Bush to love the planet, America has an Oil Family at its head. And they're seeking profits in the soon-to-be not-so-Frozen North.

If the Arctic nature reserve is opened for drilling, the impact on wildlife will be devastating.

Yet the oil won't flow for ten years, according to Democrat Maria Cantwell of Washington, and even when it does it will only reduce America's demand for gasoline for its hungry vehicles by a projected 1%. The Energy Department has estimated any ANWR oil will skim but a few pennies off the pump price of gasoline.

This saving could easily be achieved by building more efficient vehicles.

But as documented by Chomsky and others, corporate America has consistently and successfully lobbied against the production of fuel-efficient cars.

If reducing oil demand and ependency on foreign oil was the real motive for political action, the result would not be to open up one of the last wildernesses in the world to the benefit of Bush's friends, the oil cowboys.

But what the hell, the Arctic is melting, and the animals will all die anyway. If the heat doesn't get them the pollution will.

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