Centerfield

You overlooked the other possible objection: this will damage working people who fish in this area. (Which is why the Democratic Senators from Hawaii have opposed it.) Of course, economic consequences don't matter when someone who is virtuous cites ecological reasons for stopping something. But since Bush is evil, it is perfectly acceptable to use it against him.

Now, I'm not one to buy into the anti-Bush media idea, but you've a good point. The idea of Bush being anti-environment is so ingrained (although it backed up by policy evidence), the coverage will always be skeptical, much like the response would be if Ted Kennedy were to back a repeal of the estate tax.

Yup. As I've said so often, as soon as someone files to run for President, they are re-cast by the opposition as an extremist. Regardless of their actual positions and actions. Sometimes the opposition is right, sometimes not. But the re-casting occurs anyway.

Maybe I am jaded, but I stopped believing Bush does anything without considering how it effects the polls a long time ago. That been said, whether or not his finger is in the air, I think this is a good thing. It doesn't change the fact that his record on the environment isn't a very good one. I saved some fish so let's forget the fact that I want to turn the Cascade National Forest into West Texas, doesn't much work for me.

Nope. I think Bush is a villainous turd; but IF he really does this, I will give him credit.

Nope.Nope. Bush has had the most friendly media for a long time, look for them to fawn (see Matthews et al.)

However, it will still leave him in the hole environmentally.

The AOL news writers are so liberal and anti Bush it has become a joke to even read their useless tripe. How they would hate for the USA to win the wars in Iraq and Afganistan, kill Omar, Zawahiri, and Osama, and establish a Democracy in Iraq. Also get rid of Chavez in South America and open up Anwar to drilling.

What a fantastic set of achievements but the liberal lefties would never give him credit if those things happened.

At this point anything Bush does is trashed by liberals. He could suggest a tax increase and liberals would find something negative to say. For this reason we don't listen to anything liberals say. Since they are openly rooting for the terrorists in Iraq, they have zero credibility with us in anything they do or say.

Whatever good President Bush does, his detractors will criticize and stain.

Bush allowed the Neocons and Israeli to take over US policy. Lying to AMERICANS should be taken more seriously than it has been. Bush and his cronies support the rich and the middle class is in danger-can't we do something positive to bring people back together? None of the lies have been openly discussed by the Reublicans. George-who did not serve in Vietnam-had others fight in his place and NOW we go it alone and try to kill off the UN-instead of trying to change it for the better. "bring it on" and "mission accomplished?!"
The Ultra conservatives want no regulations-except for personal morality issues. I thought "what would Jesus do?" was the key belief for Christians. Instead we get the moral majority preachers who advocate killing those who disagree with us and have rolex and $2,000 suits and push political not religious beliefs.
Colin Powell was the only rational person in the administration-and then sold out just like Geo Bush senior (voodoo economics anyone?).Every dollar we cut from the wealthy tax rate means more from middle class taxpayers-people who cant pay their taxes now.

This seems too good to be true...I've always wished that Bush would do more for the environment (or at least hurt it less). I'm scared though. What if he's really just trying to protect it to distract us from something else like drilling in the Alaska preserve? This is very unlike him...I'm still having trouble taking this in. I've never liked Bush and mostly because he's so anti-environment, so this has come as a shocker. I'm just hoping that this is something he's doing just to protect the environment. Not something else. *oh please oh please oh please*

Exactly four hours by the system clock, Brian.

An AOL invasion! Congratulations, Brian! I'm jealous... how did your post get picked by the AOL people?

Bush isnt anti-environment like everyone paints him to be. That is anti-Bush spin. He proposed drilling in a completely barren area of ANWR, not the bustling forrest the environuts paint it to be, he also limited it to some 4000 acres, a very very small parcel of land to be sure. He didnt like Kyoto, well, neither do I. Kyoto would have "spurpise" UN inspectors inside our nuke plants stealing technology. do you really think the US should open up its sensitive facilities to outside inspectors? We are the #1 country in the world on most fronts. I dont see that EVER happening here.

This Ocean preserve is just one in a long line of Bush environmental feats which never make the news. Did anyone hear about this on ABC? or CNN? bush has repeatedly backed artificial reefs by sinking US ships. He has increased environmental spending more than any president in history, yet all we hear is that he didnt do enough.

Bash Bush for what he really does wrong, dont bash him on issues which he actually does right on. Bash him because he botched the ear in the same exact way 4 different presidents botched Vietnam. Bash him on this whole illegals issue. Bash him on unsecure borders. Bash him on the half-baked approach to security (border ae part of it). But environmentally? Not at all.

Oh man, the spelling bee must be stealing letters again......

Father creates ANWR. Son wants to drill in it. Son compensates by setting aside some ocean. Until they find oil there.

I applaud the proposal to create a marine santcuary anywhere but I will state without any fear of rebuttal that there are no major Republcan campiagn contributors whose oxen will be gored by this if it ever becomes reality.

Oh yeah, almost forgot... The President's travelling to Baghdad to look into Prime Minister Malaki's eyes is very praiseworthy. Reminds me of the last time he looked into a head of state's eyes and came away impressed - with Vladimir Putin.

Personaly, I do not care for President Bush position on the Illegal immergration issue and
stem cell reserch. Moreover, on all the other issues all the branches of the military are advising him from a military perspective as did the past Presidents. The information that have is more than we have weather you like it or not.If you can do a better job then run for his office.
I blame the House and Senate for the gas increases
for they are our represenatives doing a bad job.
Furthermore they just voted themselves another pay increase now what in the %#@* have they done
to help the American people? Our reps.What a joke.

Interesting. Lots of new names. Big anti-Bush contingent it looks like.

As someone whose been scuba diving Hawaii for the past 30 years I'm all for protecting the coral reefs. The main islands are getting pretty thrashed. I'm not sure what the status National monument grants the area other than being off limits for fishing.

As an Alaskan I'd also like to make an aside comment since ANWR has been brought up a couple of times. If you all are getting your info from the environmental movement you need to do a little fact checking on what exactly ANWR is. Tundra, permafrost, and mosquitos. Take western Kansas, level it out and steamroll it and you get barely an idea of how flat and barren that area is. If you are ever going to have an oil spill there is no better place to have it. Personally I'm against drilling there. Save the oil on our home turf until it becomes really scarce. If you're against drilling in ANWR for environmental reasons you need to get a grip folks. You are being lied to.

The post got a mention and link on the DAILY PULSE on AOL, Dennis. It's happened before.

With the same results. Occasionally, we pick up a new regular who learns the ropes and stays around for a bit. Most of the time, it just brings a bunch of ranting from people who just feel a need to unload. Interesting (if scary) window into the mental state of the hoi polloi.

One thing I have heard; but never really had confirmed and am curious about is that most of the oil in ANWR would have a sulpher content that is too high to be easily used domestically because of regulations. If that is true, that is reason enough to me for not drilling at this time. However, this information has always been heresay, so it is hard for me to weigh that as a factor.

Petroleum is so useful in so many ways, it seems to be a waste of good resources to be burning it as fuel. I would almost rather see the cost go up to make other less useful products become fuel then to use so much of petroleum on it. Are we going to run out? No. Just the cost and difficulty in extraction will increase. I do agree with Dennis in saving some of the easy to get to stuff in reserve in case we really need it.

As near as I can determine, the ANWR field is believed to be sweet crude, just like the other major fields in the region.

It would be a frivolous objection in any case. High sulphur crude is less desirable because it's harder to refine, but it's still oil and lots and lots of it is produced and refined today. Most of the oil from Venezuela and Mexico is high-sulphur crude. "High sulphur" or "sour" crude has about 10% more sulphur than "sweet" crude. It's not that big a difference.

#3 The oil companies approve of this sanctuary since it has been tested and found to not contain any drillable sites.

Ok, thanks Tully. As far as the processes of refining, it is not an area that I am familiar with. From the enviromental side, I have always felt that the enviromental impact from sprawl has been a lot worse then oil spillage incidents. Part of me wants to see us hold off on developing to give reasons to develop alternatives. Call it the Second Strategic Oil Reserve. I would rather siphon foreign sources now, while we can.

Kind of a conflict in issues. Politically, it seems better to me to find ways out. Economically, I feel in the long run it is better for us to conserve our own resources. Short term economic will not be good. So short term political would trump long term economic, once again. I still feel that ANWR drilling itself would not make a significant change in the gas and oil supply other then being a source that is not politically unstable. It is the politics of oil that makes me want to push alternative fuels. Conservation will take care of itself if prices continue to rise. However, no politician is going to allow himself to be seen as doing something that would cause short term economic pain. Hence, we will probably do the easy thing and drill. I would prefer that we don't.

This thread, which was created to point out one form of knee-jerk silliness:

Bush action --> empty-headed anti-Bush assertion

has succeeded in pointing out the other form of knee-jerk silliness:

Bush criticism --> empty-headed anti-liberal assertion.

To me, one operational definition of centrism is to avoid both of these behaviors. Evaluate everything case by case. In simpler terms, any critique which begins "Conservatives always..." or "Liberals always..." is by definition inane.

Wow, an AOL drive-by. I'm truly honored.

Greg, nicely put, even though you sound a litle bit more surprised than you should.

The generalization I was going for was something like "Wing A's party does something Wing B should think is good, but Wing B is incapable of acknowledging this, and so instead tells everyone why there's no reason to celebrate."

Of course, if they can't come up with a good rationalization, there's always the fallback plan: stony silence.

In simpler terms, any critique which begins "Conservatives always..." or "Liberals always..." is by definition inane.

Be careful, Greg. Pointing this out in specific instances will automatically get you labelled as the opposite of the labeller. :-)

The Alaskan reserves would keep cars running for how long? The Bush court had this ruling on wetlands regulation .

I am a bit more concerned here by the Right claiming to be environmental advocates while eroding existing environmental regulation. It is bad when government regulates wetlands (upstream), but good when government can invade the customary concept of privacy? Who decides the topography of governmental power? I see this not just the binary knee-jerking between partisan sides (demonology), but also the newspeak that accompanies each sides claims and terminology. Would a Liberal dare utter the word hegemony? Would a conservative accept the idea of partial amnesty?

Max,
Estimated recoverable reserves in ANWR are about 10Billion barrels. Some estimates go much higher if you include more than just the coastal region. We use about 20Million barrels a day in the US. 40% of that goes to transportation. ANWR could keep us driving, flying, and moving about the country for about 3 years. But the spigot can't put out more than a million barrels a day (while Prudehoe and related fields are still in production) without building a new pipeline. Maybe 30 years or more of production. ANWR will get developed sooner or later. It's economics 101.

Mother Earth will get degraded sooner or later. It's human nature 101. :(

Dennis,
ANWR as you showed is no solution to our energy needs. Salmon is already endangered and the environmental risk, I believe, is not worth it. I do think ANWR should be developed as a strategic reserve in case of conflict (like a Gulf blocked by sunken tankers). A strategic cushion beyond partisan politics and corporate greed. I consider the mention of ANWR by Bush as an unfortunate misdirection. The money used for the likely exploitation of Alaskan wilderness could best be spent on advanced power generation facilities, carbon sequestering to boost oil recovery and investment in the DOD's crash energy strategy mentioned at Defense Tech. ANWR is a drop in the energy bucket with much larger energy potential in tar oil north of our border. If industry can do what Honeywell, Pratt, and other engine makers are doing with 40% reductions in fuel cost with increase horsepower, I do not see the point in ANWR other than strategic reserves.

If this administration expanded the National Guard to replace America's ancient transmission grid we would save far more joules per year than all the Alaskan crude would yield.

Renewable energy, recycling metals and finite minerals, and creating synthetic materials (and elements) means Mother Earth need not be "significantly" degraded.

Classical entropy does not rule dynamic systems pushed far from equilibrium by free energy (the sun). In fact, spontaneous patterns of organization appear in such systems as they are pushed further and further from equilibrium. Hence, our life on earth. Her crust is shaped by life. Its surface is a living system. Classical thermodynamics have been refashioned to reflect this reality of chemical and organic evolution ( see Prigogine) and the complexity we observe in the universe in open systems. There are also many "facts" concerning the origin and evolution of human behavior, which suggest that with the proper development of altruism (which seems to require the altruistic genes for punishment and enforcement in order for cooperation to work between large unrelated groups) behavior has and can continue to be "progressively" modified.

The imperative for survival requires cooperation. I refuse to be cynical staring at all those youthful faces. We will become what they are taught. I wonder if they will come to regard our fumbling of America's unique position at the turn of the century. We have a receding potential to secure the continued prosperity and security of Liberal Democracy, before we just slip into a over harvested degraded carbon-filled multipolar mess with places like NYC, London, Paris, etc. eventually take big hits.

A big step forward for civilization is to understand the primacy in and among living system of the self-sustaining cycle of ecology that has kept us at least 2.5 billion years immortal so far, despite the Deccan Trapps, impacting celestial rocks, magnetic reversals, and a whole lot more. Perhaps symbiosis might percolate into popular consciousness as evident in our own necessary mitochondria and awaken us to the profound potential of cooperation, novelty and the evolutionary pathways they engender.

Well that’s my thought for the night….

"I wonder if they will come to regard our fumbling of America's unique position at the turn of the century", as the result of sheer greed, stupidity and arrogance.

Gee....I had left out the best part....

I wasn't thinking quite that far forward Max ;) I am a bit cynical about behavior modification solving our immediate problems. I don't see anything in recorded history that would convince me we are on that path. No harm in hoping. Perhaps the coming singularity (Kurzweill) will solve our problems.

The biggest issue with our energy situation is the super-greenies very effective lobby against nuke plants. 1 nuke plant can produce the same energy as 4 natural gas plants and 8 coal plants. with enough nuke plants in place, we could not only power the whole country cheaply and effectively, but we could switch all our cars to electric. There is simply no reason not to do this other than fear, fear of 3 Mile Island, fear of Chernobyl - both engineering flaws. But Seabrook 1, 2 and 3 ran for 35 years without a hitch, and Seabrook 3 is still running today providing 2/3 of the energy for New Hampshire Vermont and Maine. The waste you say? Well, I would rather have a few barrels of rods over 35 years than the toxic air pollution put out by the plants, and cars. Cant burry that in a mountain in Nevada.

I am WAY far from being an expert, but couldn't we even cut down on the nuke waste if we decided to allow breeder reactors for recycling.

And isn't France one of the countries that uses nukes pretty heavily, and has done so safely for quite some time?

Of course, the worry with nukes is that the more we used the technology, the more widespread and efficient it would become, and the more people who'd want to use it, and the more people who would use it, and the more money we'd save, and the more we'd use it...until we successed our way into an accident becoming a virtual certainty sooner or later.

With something like say, flying, we live with a VERY good safety record where we have hundreds of thousands of flights, (I dunno, maybe even millions annually counted worldwide) and only a small handful of accidents. So if our won-loss record there is 834,791 wins and 3 losses, that's pretty good, even acceptable for practical purposes. But with nukes, the analogy may well be the story about the all-time Russian roulette champ who was 70-1. And I'd credit any speculation to the effect that presumedly the technology may have developed to a point where a complete meltdown is much less likely to lead to a china syndrome. Still, playing with nukes...it just aint beanbag.