Without reigniting the "should they or shouldn't they" debate, I wanted to highlight the part of this story that disgusts me:
quote: This year, drilling supporters attached language ending the ban on drilling in the refuge to a budget measure that is immune from filibuster.
So, if you can't win support through legitimate means, on a topic that people are vehemently for or against, then cheat.
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How is it cheating to work around one aribtrary rule by using another?
I hate the rule-making process in both houses of Congress. But, until the whole mess is redone once and for all, I don't expect either side to forego using the rules to their advantage, especially when the advantage is that the other side can't use one of the arbitrary rules to block them.
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Cheating was perhaps not the best use of the word.
Disingenuous would probably be better.
The fact that either side can take advantage of these arbitrary rules doesn't make me feel better about them existing.
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I agree. But, once again, the threat this maneuvering was aimed at was a fillibuster: the ridiculous fiction that the Senate is fully deliberating by not limiting debate on a topic.
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What scares me most about that article is this:
quote:Bush and other drilling advocates argue that the country needs the estimated 10.5 billion barrels of oil that are believed to lie beneath the refuges coastal tundra in northeastern Alaska and slow the growing dependence on oil imports. The United States now uses about 7.3 billion barrels of oil a year.
Ok, so all this will get is us roughly a year and a half worth of oil? This sounds roughly equivalent to me cashing out my 401K so I can use the money to further the illusion that I don't need to budget better.
But, ya know, it might bring down gas prices which everyone knows will be an indicator that the current administration must be doing something right. Posts: 6394 | Registered: Dec 1999
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Again, I agree. The filibuster is a fluke of the system, but avoiding it by attaching riders to existing bills seems more damaging to me. A filibuster can only stop one topic, whereas a rider to a bill can have wide-reaching impacts. Personally I think both should be abolished.
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KarlEd, Whether drilling is a good idea or a bad idea is honestly irrelevant to me. What bothers me is that the decision was reached without a true vote on its merit. The desire to pass a budget bill trumped a true Senate debate.
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quote:Originally posted by KarlEd: What scares me most about that article is this:
quote:Bush and other drilling advocates argue that the country needs the estimated 10.5 billion barrels of oil that are believed to lie beneath the refuges coastal tundra in northeastern Alaska and slow the growing dependence on oil imports. The United States now uses about 7.3 billion barrels of oil a year.
Ok, so all this will get is us roughly a year and a half worth of oil?
Emphasis mine. It's an extension measure... it's not like we're going to cut off all other sources and just rely on Alaskan Oil. If you had a year and half's salary buried in your back yard, it would seem silly to borrow for a large percentage of your spending without tapping that first...
Personally, I'd like to see something done about re-invigorating nuclear energy. I also like the solar stirling machine idea Dag linked to a couple of months ago...
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Jim-Me -- you might hesitate if there's a distinct possibility that digging up that money would irreparably damage your prize winning tulips, you didn't have anything to buy in the near future, and you could always dig it up later. Also, borrowing is an incorrect analogy. Its payment you receive for freelance work from people in other countries, not particularly different from the payments you receive from people in the same country.
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points taken, fugu... but there's a strong push from your family to end that freelance work, bordering on a demand.
With the same people screaming "no blood for oil" and "no alaskan drilling" the satisfaction of a segment of the populace is clearly beyond the reach of this administration *shrug*
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Jim-me, you completely overlooked my analogy, which took into account that I understand it is an extension measure. My point is that if we clearly have so little reserves that they amount to just under a year and a half of present comsumption, then the red flag should be that we need to seriously address the problem of over-consumption. Even if used as an extension measure what will that give us? 15 years tops if it's to have any real effect.
It might be worth cashing out my 401K if I use it to pay off my credit card bills and then reduce my spending to the point I'm actually saving something, but if I'm already spending more than I'm making and I cash out my 401K to pay a percentage of my credit card bills while continuing to overspend, well, it's gonna be a cold hard retirement.
I'm not saying good or bad on the drilling itself. I'm pointing out that for all the talk of tapping into some vast "reserves", it's really a frighteningly small pittance of oil we're talking about.
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quote:Originally posted by Jim-Me: With the same people screaming "no blood for oil" and "no alaskan drilling" the satisfaction of a segment of the populace is clearly beyond the reach of this administration *shrug*
This is definitely an assumption worthy of Bush himself. What evidence do you have that the two camps are "the same people". I'm all for self reliance if it can be managed with minimal destruction of other important resources. But I'm also fairly sure you'd lump me in with those "same people" based on any number of issues with which I'd disagree with you.
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and you overlooked where I actually talked about some inroads being made into the consumption game... I'm not sure how much oil is actually used to generate electricity, but bring the cost of electricity down far enough and electrical heating will overtake oil heating (which is a significant consumptive factor). The exapnding availibility of hybrid vehicles is another case... particularly the availibility of hybrid family vehicles (I can't fit my family in a Prius).
Perhaps more incentives from the government could help here, but things are progressing.
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quote:and you overlooked where I actually talked about some inroads being made into the consumption game...
Not really. I ignored it. There is a difference. I read it, but it was an aside and had nothing to do with my point, so I didn't see the need to acknowledge it. Not that it isn't valid to your feelings on the subject, and in fact, I agree with you there. It just wasn't to the point of anything I had written.
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quote: I have seen the same people complain about our dependence on foreign oil and complain about opening Alaskan drilling.
This doesn't actually seem to me to be hypocritical, actually. If you believe that the problem lies in our dependence on oil in general, and believe that the Alaskan frontier will only yield a tiny, temporary pittance of oil, you might easily conclude that reducing overall oil dependence -- reducing consumption by, say, 5% each year -- would be far, far more helpful than draining a pathetic reserve.
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Yes, reducing consumption is going to have to be a matter of cumulative individual effort. However, the push to tap into the reserves is being motivated by the desire to keep the price of gas down. As long as that happens, we maintain the status quo of waste. The best thing to happen for hybrid cars to date has been the rise in gas prices at the end of the summer. Most people wouldn't even consider them until faced with $4/gallon prices.
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If oil shale possibilities pan out, we may be able to buy some time before peak oil effects happen.
I'd love to see a serious oil shale program in combination with an alternative energy source program. Regulate the oil shale as a strategic resource and require royalties to the government. Dedicate all the royalties to alternative energy source research - both grid-based and portable.
Between the higher extraction cost and the royalties, it should be able to keep prices up high enough to encourage conservation.
If the oil shale technology is sound, then we will buy time to avoid peak oil and convert to renewable resources. Renewable resources will generally reduce greenhouse emissions.
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quote:I agree. But, once again, the threat this maneuvering was aimed at was a fillibuster: the ridiculous fiction that the Senate is fully deliberating by not limiting debate on a topic.
That's not very fair to the fillibuster - I don't think anyone who pays any attention to these sorts of things is actually under the impression that a fillibuster is really about fully debating something. It is a rule that has evolved which serves the role of preventing the majority party from overruling the minority on the issues that the minority considers most critical. In a two party system, this can act as a valuable check on majority rule. Hence you can't really call it arbitrary - not any more so than law in general is arbitrary.
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I think the majority should be persuaded by the minority rather than blocked. Its called Democracy. Republicanism should stop at the polls.
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quote:That's not very fair to the fillibuster - I don't think anyone who pays any attention to these sorts of things is actually under the impression that a fillibuster is really about fully debating something.
Byrd specifically talked about how important it was to have full debate during the judicial fillibuster scrap.
quote:It is a rule that has evolved which serves the role of preventing the majority party from overruling the minority on the issues that the minority considers most critical. In a two party system, this can act as a valuable check on majority rule.
Then they should just change the rules to require a supermajority. We've got this nice system in the Constitution for doing that.
quote:Hence you can't really call it arbitrary - not any more so than law in general is arbitrary.
Then the rules which regulate how related elements of a bill have to be to each other can't be called "arbitrary" either.
That's my point. One rule was used to get around another rule. This was legitimate means, to the exact same extent that the threatened fillibuster which would have stopped it was legitimate means.
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No, its not called Democracy, though many people do so. This country was explicitly founded a Republic, and explicitly founded not a Democracy.
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This infuriates me. If both Clinton and Bush hadn't provided mileage exemptions, we might not be so desperate now. instead, we'll sacrifice an entire ecosystem for the sake of money. (fume fume fume)
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I'll probably offend a lot of people with this, but isn't Alaska just ice? I don't think mining there would affect the general econsystem since the creatures there can always swim somewhere else, and theres virtually any (probably no) plantlife there. If humans don't use an ecosystem and theres no plants there to contribute to the ozone layer, an ecosystem can't really be that important. Look at all the space we've ruined with cities, which we're all living in.
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I sincerely hope you are 12 years old, Rusta-burger. No one older than that should be that ignorant of the planet on which he lives.
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No, I honestly don't think that too many thirteen year olds would know if there's plant life in Alaska or not. Unless, of course, they lived in Alaska?
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i guess not. My american friends never heard of Jack London. I'm Australian so i have no idea what that is. We've already defiled lots of land, what's one more? You can't juste xpect the government to suddenly satisfy everyones new found desire for environmentalism. Rome wasn't built in a day, but no doubt in the next twenty years the world will be a lot less contaminated by humanity so what is one more oil rig really going to do?
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quote: You can't juste xpect the government to suddenly satisfy everyones new found desire for environmentalism.
Wow.
Where do I begin... I guess with the statement of "new found desire for environmentalism"
The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge was established in 1923 as an oil reserve for national security. Around 1953, it was designated as a wild-life refuge based on a report called "The Last Great Wilderness".
50 years of protection is hardly a new-found desire.
The 20 years that have been spent fighting legislation that would allow drilling is also not a new-found desire.
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You do if you want to keep up the energy supply for the ever increasing population. Meanwhile, they are changing energy sources. These companies know what they are doing. I don't know why you all seem to like demonizing the oil companies so much. Who do you think is responsible for all these alternative energy sources. Not entrepeneurs, the oil companies are. They're not even calling themselves oil companies anymore, they're Energy Companies. Here we have the option to change to green energy for provided by the state energy company for just 9c more a (i don't know what unit lol). And yet I'm so surprised by how many people havn;t done it.
let me ask you. What are you doing for the environment besides complaining that someone else isn't doing enough. Do you owna watertank, or two? Do you have solar panels on your roof? Do you but green energy?
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And its not about the oil rig, its about the mini-city that needs to sprin up around an oil rig.
The desire for environmental protection in the US is hardly new. There is a long tradition of conservation. The area of Alaska drilling will be in represents one of our largest unspoiled habitats (not because most of our habitats are small, but because this one is humongous). However, the drilling will take place in one of the areas of the habitat most important to the Alaskan ecosystem -- the coast (here's a map: http://blog.nam.org/archives/anwr-large.jpg ).
Drilling-associated activity may significantly disrupt the caribou population, which, in addition to the intrinsic value of a species, is culturally central to one tribe in the area in particular, the Gwich'in.
And in twenty years, the world population will be significantly greater, not less.
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fugu, I never said the population would be lower in twety years (I'd wager it will be though), just that humanity will be looking after the environment better then.
And, Karl, what on earth does George Orwell have to do with education? Don't let your argument be that you've been educated in something I havn't. Have you completed a four year apprenticeship in electronics? Do I throw that in your face? Make your point if you have one. Don't just expect me to go research or just know about any persons findings you feel I should. Why don't you actually say something if you're going to post?
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He means you've not read Orwell's 1984 or his articles on the sort of political doublespeak that renames innocent dead "civilian casualties" or "collateral damage."
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This is Mitchs girlfriend. He's going to be shocked when he reads this but I don't agree with Mitchs view on Alaska. But he is an internationalist, not any sort of environmentalist, so he probably shouldn't be posting in here.
This Orwell stuff sounds interesting. There wouldn't happen to be somewhere on the net I could read these articles, places you could provide links to?
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Or big oil companies "energy companies". I can assure you the change hasn't come because they are actively weaning themselves from oil. It has come because their primary business - making profits from finding, refining, and selling petroleum - is increasingly (albeit hypocritically) unpopular.
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I think your example is not a good one, Dagonee. Fetus has been in use for quite some time, including before there really was a pro-choice movement. For instance, the OED has a reference from 1398 to it being used for an unborn child.
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I take it the majority of you are science fiction fans and thats why I'm not getting the interest in the Orwells stuff.
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Orwell is considered one of the great authors of the 20th century. Either 1984 or Animal Farm is required reading for nearly every student in the US at some point, and often both are.
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And to Mitch, I apologize if you are indeed sincere in your lack of knowledge about the Alaskan ecosystem, Jack London, and George Orwell. I just find your posts shockingly ill informed to the point that I had to conclude you were either very young or a troll. Perhaps you are neither.
And internationalist, environmentalist, or rabid partisan, Mitch is certainly as welcome as any of us to post here. He just can't post completely indefensible things without expecting some sort of reply.
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quote:I think your example is not a good one, Dagonee. Fetus has been in use for quite some time, including before there really was a pro-choice movement. For instance, the OED has a reference from 1398 to it being used for an unborn child.
"Civillian casualty" is as accurate as "fetus." I'm sure I can find references as old for both "civillian" and "casualty."
Further, I would bet that most of the time when someone is referring to a specific unborn child, it is referred to as "baby" or soemething else other than fetus.
But really I was making a point about the arbitrary nature of declaring a particular appellation to be "Orwellian."
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For the record, I wasn't specifically calling "Energy Company" an "Orwellian" term, either. What made me think of Orwell was Rusta-burger's implied "they must be actively working to replace oil-based energy, after all, they're calling themselves 'energy companies' now." The term might not be Orwellian, but his reaction to it certainly is.
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I read it, but it was an aside and had nothing to do with my point, so I didn't see the need to acknowledge it. Not that it isn't valid to your feelings on the subject, and in fact, I agree with you there. It just wasn't to the point of anything I had written.
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