fuming, or rather, drilling.

So who here thought the U.S. getting AMWR would be the end of their greediness? Me, too. Apparently, I was naive to think greediness somehow meant one usually stops when they got what they were originally after. Stoopid me.

I just read this a few minutes ago and I'm pissed. Because now are they not happy with only AMWR, and since they can't drill of the coast of Virginia, they are going after the other two nature reserves in Alaska: Teshekpuk Lake and the Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge.

It makes my blood boil to see how they want more and will seemingly stop at nothing to destroy all of our beautiful earth and take from it 'til she cannot give anymore. What happens when there isn't anymore to take? Agh - I hope I won't be alive to see then.

I wanna know why I keep seeing these kinds of comments,

"Now, however, concern about rising prices and dependence on foreign crude is forcing a new look at the area. "The country needs access to its oil and gas resources, and this area is a petroleum reserve," Henri Bisson, Alaska state director for the
Bureau of Land Management' (BLM), said in a speech announcing the Bush administration's plans to overturn Clinton-era rules that closed Teshekpuk Lake and its shores to oil leasing.

when I should be seeing more plans to produce hybrids or alternative fuels that burn more efficiently in the usage process. I'm not a science geek so I can't help in this area but I know it's being done thanks to current ideas such as BioDiesel which has recently made it to the news. The technological knowledge is there people, use it!

I don't think anyone is seriously contemplating the long term effects drilling can have on any environment. It's easy to guesstimate, but it's totally different when it actually happens. I've seen groups of people build and they don't care what they run over or in to. They just know they have a job to do and want to get it done as quickly as possible. Shit, I got upset when the local construction company put a bunch of 4x4's down so their tractors could get over a creek, totally blocking the creek in the process which, in essence, can destroy a local ecological system completely.

(The 4x4's were so embedded in the earth at that point, there was no way I could have moved them and talking to the company to remove them wasn't an option as I've been told they are very cutthroat. They cut down every.single.tree. on a 10-12 acre lot save 3. Tropical Storms Gaston/Isabel blew those 3 down quickly. Now the guy who had the house built has been spending way too much time trying to even out his land so it doesn't become a massive moat everytime it rains. Had he just left all the trees there, it wouldn't be a problem.)

There isn't much voice of reason in the article from yahoo!, but there have been local resoluctions passed:

To Ed Alexander, the shareholder who pushed the antitrade resolution, the proposed development will lead to an influx of outside workers, urban hunters, and roads that will cause social and environmental strains. "I think it's going to hurt the people up here for many years to come," says Mr. Alexander.

There is this, too:

Critics worry, too, that the swap could open up other protected lands. "This would be a very bad precedent to do a land exchange to facilitate oil and gas development within a wildlife refuge," says Deborah Williams of the Alaska Conservation Foundation.

We opened up AMWR and now they want more. They are going to keep wanting more until there is nothing left and only then will they realize they should have relied more heavily on alternative fuels, only to find that it's too late because they drilled everywhere, killing everything.

To me, continuously drilling for oil instead of "recycling" is to bring on the Apocolypse.

I love my lakes, rivers and streams and I like that I can go to the river now and see lots of herons, egrets, fish jumping out of the water, turtles sunning themselves....I seriously am heart broken that my county doesn't recycle plastic anymore. I think I'm going to start bringing all of our plastic and bottles into Richmond and set them up on the curb of someone's house on recycling day. I can't even throw out a plastic shower curtain without thinking of a gazillion things I could be doing with it. In the winter, I burn all papers and thin pieces of cardboard that aren't recyclable.

I don't want to imagine living a life in a world that no longer has the infamous whippoorwill to wake me up in the middle of the night with it's loud shrieking. It makes me very, very sad indeed.

(Okay, I just found this post on Daily Kos, and he didn't know about the ANWR being snuck in the back door as this post was dated April 30th. He must not read my blog bc then he would have gotten a play by play since I was listening to it being debated on the Senate floor via CSPAN. Someone should tell him to read my blog and he might learn something a month and a half early. Oh. Wait. I'm a mommy and I blog about mommy stuff....)