But the government is making them jump through hoops anyway:
Less than a month after declaring polar bears a threatened species because of global warming, the Bush administration is giving oil companies permission to annoy and potentially harm them in the pursuit of oil and natural gas.I'm sick and tired of environmentalists ruling the country and interfering with my ability to get gas. Who died and left them God? Maybe they can afford the high cost of gas but I can't.The Fish and Wildlife Service issued regulations this week providing legal protection to seven oil companies planning to search for oil and gas in the Chukchi Sea off the northwestern coast of Alaska if "small numbers" of polar bears or Pacific walruses are incidentally harmed by their activities over the next five years.
Environmentalists said the new regulations give oil companies a blank check to harass the polar bear.
[...]
Exploring in the Chukchi Sea's 29.7 million acres will require as many as five drill ships, one or two icebreakers, a barge, a tug and two helicopter flights per day, according to the government. Oil companies will also be making hundred of miles of ice roads and trails along the coastline.
[...]The seven companies will be required to map out the locations of polar bear dens, train their employees about the bears' habits and take other measures to minimize clashes with them. In exchange, the companies are legally protected if their operations unintentionally harm the bears. Any bear deaths would still warrant an investigation and could result in penalty under the law.
[...]
There is no evidence of a polar bear being killed by oil and gas activities in Alaska since 1993, according to the Fish and Wildlife Service. Since 1960, when the hunt for oil and gas began in Alaska, only two fatalities of polar bears have been linked to oil and gas activities in the state, the service said.
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Well, you're partly right about Bush, at least.
... that he's an unwitting tool, or just a tool?
golly, if only we could keep china from drilling for our oil just off of the florida coast!!! tee-hee.
it's kind of funny imagining a line of environmentalists at the entry to the gas station beating michele away with sticks.
and you really need to get off of the drilling for more oil in our national parks. we wouldn't even start to get oil from anwr for 10 years, and it's affect (according to the department of energy) would be a measly 75c per $135 barrel. it's just not worth it. move on.
"Environmentalists rule the country? Are you saying President Bush is an unwitting tool of Greenpeace now?"
Why the heck do you guys keep bringing up Bush? You can't fool the readers of this blog (well, you can fool the Dems since they are willfully blind on this issue) that it's anyone but the Democrats who have gotten us into this mess. They want higher gas prices because they want to curtail use.
Michele, you said that 'Environmentalists rule the country'.
Last I checked, Bush is still in office. The Democrats have only been the slight lead in the Congress for less than 2 years. So, who has been 'ruling the country'?
You can't really stop people from 'bringing up Bush' while he's STILL PRESIDENT. HE is the closest thing we have to someone 'ruling the country'.
And we will still note, again, that 75 cents decrease, while supplies last, (Which is about 4 years, as noted, and take ten years to get there) per BARREL of gas is not going to to even be a noticeable change per gallon.
So, the idea that not drilling ANWR or the shelf is A. Causing prices to raise (how is a status quo situation changing prices?) and B. doing so will make prices drop at any significant level, is simply wrong.
And one can't make THAT argument (which relies on the rather unrealistic view that we have this huge stockpile of native oil that we're just refusing to tap), and claim that we'd use the time to look for alternatives, since the ones MAKING that argument usually don't even think there's a need to look for anything but more oil, since apparently oil resources are infinite.
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