mild outrage

Chrissy has a coffee cup that can hold half a pot of coffee; it's like a soup bowl with a handle. While carefully navigating the large rim of said cup, and consuming delicious Original Glazed Krispy Kreme doughnuts, I perused today's Grand Forks Herald. Page 2A was a gigantic green advertisement, paid for by Americans for American Energy. Read it if you like, but you probably already get the gist of their argument. (Republicans for Republican Elections?)

I thought they made the sort of case that would create a lot of initial nods and murmurs of agreements at breakfast tables all over the region, and I simply could not let this giant fluff piece go by uncontested. Arming myself with some useful tidbits of fact (thanks Wikipedia), I composed the following letter to the editor:

ANWR Ad Running Empty on Facts

Page 2A of July 10th's Herald displays a full-page ad, paid for by Americans for American Energy, exhorting us to call our Senators and encourage them to support legislation to drill for oil in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). The ad makes an attractive case, speaking of "abundant supplies of American-made energy" that are "locked up on federal lands and in places like ANWR."

This ad speaks loudest when we consider what it does not say. According to estimates by the U.S. Department of the Interior, there are approximately 7.7 billion barrels of oil that drilling can recover. The United States presently uses 20 million barrels of oil every day. If ANWR's oil reserves were used to supply 10% of America's oil needs, we would exhaust the entire supply in less than 10 years. A small fraction of our energy needs that will be consumed in the time it takes for a high-school graduate to become a doctor hardly constitutes an "abundant supply."

In fact, it seems that Americans for American Energy are some of the only people left (besides Republicans in the House and Senate, and the president) who are interested in drilling in ANWR. Oil companies with operations in Alaska, such as BP, Chevron, Texaco, and ConocoPhillips, are all quite familiar with the geology of the region. All of them have stopped lobbying for the right to drill in the reserve.

Drilling in ANWR will not, as the ad suggests, "let America solve its own energy problems." In reality, it lets Republicans solve their own election problems. It will also leave the next generation of leaders no ANWR, no oil left in ANWR, and no real, long-lasting solution to America's addiction to fossil fuels.

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We'll see if they print it, and if it raises the hackles of any local wingnuts.