President Bush has stated several times recently that the United States must break reliance on foreign energy sources. Drilling for oil in Alaska has become one of his solutions to the energy crises. Instead of drilling for oil in Alaska and upsetting the natural ecosystem, the United States must find alternative, clean energy sources.The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) is home to 45 species of mammals, including caribou, wolves, moose, musk oxen and polar bears, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the group that manages the ANWR. To the west of the refuge lie oil fields where companies would drill.
Under existing law, only part of the ANWR refuge can be opened for drilling if the Bush administration and oil companies press forward with drilling plans. The area is known as the 1002 area, and it is roughly 1.5 million acres large, according to the MSNBC Web site.
President Bush has pushed drilling for oil in Alaska for the last few years. However, environmental activists, Democrats and moderate Republicans stopped the vote in 2003. Last month, the vote passed in the Senate 51-49 because the proposal to drill for oil in Alaska was attached to a budget bill, a bill that was exempt from the power of filibuster.
Recently, the House also voted to open the Arctic refuge to oil companies. If companies drill for oil in Alaska, it will harm the environment and animals. Caribou come to the coastal plain from Canada to give birth during summer months, and musk oxen live there year-round while pregnant polar bears use the area as a den, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service.
Drilling for oil would damage the land and create an unbalance in the area?s ecosystem. Streets and roads would also have to be created through the natural habitat so the oil companies could get their trucks and drilling machines to the drilling site.
As environmentalists and senators opposed to the drilling plan have also argued, the United States needs to decrease reliance on oil and find other energy sources instead of opening protected lands to drilling companies and special interests.
Oil companies and scientists are not even sure how much oil is in the Arctic region. In 1998, the U.S. Geological Survey collected data and came up with estimates of the amount of oil that possibly exists in the region. The study concluded that there is a 95 percent probability that there are 4.25 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil in the area, which is quite a small amount and not enough to feed the United States? oil addiction.
The United States consumes the most oil daily in the world. According to the U.S. Department of Energy and the Energy Information Administration, the United States consumed 19.7 million barrels of oil a day in 2002. Therefore, 4.25 billion barrels of oil that could possibly be in the Arctic region would not last the country very long.
Democrats, moderate Republicans and environmental groups that have worked hard to protect the Arctic region are deeply saddened by the possibility that the Arctic refuge will be open for drilling.
The Democratic Senator from California, Barbara Boxer, who led the Senate against drilling for Alaska in 2003, showed pictures of animals and the natural habitat of ANWR the day that the Senate recently voted to drill for oil in Alaska. “To me, this is a God-given environment,” she said the day after the vote was passed in March, acccording to The New York Times.
The Bush administration and oil companies claim that drilling for oil in Alaska will decrease the country?s reliance on foreign oil, but that seems quite unlikely. The United States consumes far more oil than can be supplied by the Alaskan refuge.
Instead of relying on oil and opening up protected habitats that are homes to wildlife, the United States must find alternative energy sources. Citizens should call their representatives in congress and senators and tell them to stop the plan to drill for oil in Alaska. Pressure must be placed on government officials to find better energy sources so that the United States may stop our oil addiction.
Brian Fanelli is a junior majoring in comparative literature with minors in creative writing and journalism.