The Senate Energy Committee voted today to include Arctic Refuge drilling in a massive budget reconciliation proposal, which will make it filibuster-proof. The fate of the budget reconciliation is not totally clear, but the odds are looking pretty grim. Our own Amanda Griscom Little will be writing more about this later in the week.
If you want to do something to try to stop it, the Wilderness Society has your standard online petition going. Sigh.
As a political issue, I find the Refuge rather mystifying.
Now, I understand why lawmakers (from both parties) support it: Wealthy contributors stand to benefit. Nothing out of the ordinary there.
But why is the Republican base so fired up about it? And why have so many progressives been so quick to give up the fight? After all, no one but the oil companies -- or more specifically, the oil-services companies -- stand to gain from this. The amount of oil extracted will be trivial in the grand scheme of things, and it won't lower gas prices or energy prices or make us any less dependent on "foreign oil." There's no guarantee the oil will even be sold in the U.S. (More on the facts here.)
Somehow this issue, a fairly transparent case of corporate plundering, has become a kind of ideological totem. What's going on?
I don't have any pat answers, but a good place to start is reading this great essay by Paul Waldman over on AP. Among many points (some more convincing than others), he argues that the right has expended a great deal of time, money, and energy not just opposing this or that liberal politician or policy proposal, but demonizing liberalism itself. They've drawn a strawman caricature of liberalism and attacked it relentlessly -- every individual issue is merely a proxy, an illustration, of liberalism's evil. (Liberals, in the grips of the much-discussed policy literalism, tend to oppose proposals or politicians but rarely conservatism as such.) The point transfers straightforwardly to environmentalism -- indeed, from the Right point of view, there's almost total overlap.
This means that, by now, open liberal (or, god forbid, "extreme environmentalist") support for something -- say, keeping drills out of the Arctic Refuge -- is in and of itself a strike against it in the eyes of the Republican base. The merits of the case are incidental. If progressives vocally support protecting the Refuge, then it is a matter of honor, a matter of principle, to get the drills in there. Libero-enviro-socialists have plans for world domination, and even if it is not obvious exactly how, anything they support is part of that plan and must be opposed.
Worse yet, vocal liberal or environmentalist support even seems to embarrass some "moderate" liberals. If the left wing of the Dem party supports something, moderates view it as an opportunity to distance themselves from the unwashed masses and establish their solid centrist bona fides. Even when the issue, like drilling in the Refuge, is not obviously ideological at all.
It's bizarre: moderates proving their moderation by allowing corporations to plunder one of the last truly wild spaces in the country, to the benefit of no one but those corporations.
How did we fall down this rabbit hole?
Comments
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Corey McKrill Posted 7:31 am
19 Oct 2005
First of all, this:
But why is the Republican base so fired up about it? And why have so many progressives been so quick to give up the fight? After all, no one but the oil companies -- or more specifically, the oil-services companies -- stand to gain from this. The amount of oil extracted will be trivial in the grand scheme of things, and it won't lower gas prices or energy prices or make us any less dependent on "foreign oil." There's no guarantee the oil will even be sold in the U.S.
is making the assumption that everyone is reading the same fact book when it comes to the costs/benefits of drilling in the Arctic. It's sort of like the global warming debate: everyone clings to their favorite partisan arguments and factoids, no matter how thoroughly they've been debunked or marginalized. I can't speak for the Republican base, but I'll bet they don't put nearly as much weight on measuring the "trivial" amount of oil extracted, if they even believe that's an issue, or have heard about it at all. If this website is any indication, their main concerns are:
Revenues to the State and Federal Treasury Federal revenues would be enhanced by billions of dollars from bonus bids, lease rentals, royalties and taxes. Estimates on bonus bids for ANWR by the Office of Management and Budget and the Department of Interior for the first 5 years after Congressional approval are 4.2 billion dollars.
Jobs To Be Created Between 250,000 and 735,000 ANWR jobs are estimated to be created by development of the Coastal Plain.
Economic Impact Between 1977 and 2004, North Slope oil field development and production activity contributed over $50 billion to the nations economy, directly impacting each state in the union.
etc...
If the pro-drilling constituency only acknowledges these points, then they're probably "fired up" about progressives' apparent attempt to stymie economic benefits. Many of my fellow Alaskans cling with tenacity to these points, which they see as being especially beneficial to the economy of our state. If I believed that any of the above benefits were realistic and would support the local economy instead of corporate bank accounts, and if I believed that the environmental consequences of drilling in the Refuge would be as negligible as the site claims, I'd probably be in favor too. After all, my reasons for caring about environmental issues and about economic issues are basically the same: they're in my best interests, and thus the best interests of my community and state. Which leads me back to this, in Dave's post:
If progressives vocally support protecting the Refuge, then it is a matter of honor, a matter of principle, to get the drills in there. Libero-enviro-socialists have plans for world domination, and even if it is not obvious exactly how, anything they support is part of that plan and must be opposed.
It has been contrued to the Republican base that caring about environmental issues is the same thing as supporting the libero-enviro-socialists' "anti-growth agenda." So it comes down to this: one side thinks the other is naively against any form of economic growth and uses the environment as its excuse, while the other side thinks the former is being mislead by corporate interests who use economic growth as justification for maximizing their profits at any cost.
A sad paradox, when we all have the same desire to protect and nurture our own best interests.
http://grist.org/
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josullivan58 Posted 7:55 am
19 Oct 2005
Two of the posts here on the gristmill about DDT (from Tim Lambert) and about the eco-terrorism labels are examples of anti-environmental campaign. I also think gristmill's advice about how environmentalists should respond to the terrorism charges by exposing these lies and who is behind is the best response and trying to explain its just a few bad apples etc etc etc is just playing into anti-environmentalist's hands.
Much as been said about the "death" of environmentalism, but I think the more accurate way to put it is that there are people who are trying to kill environmentalism. They are spreading lies to destroy environmentalist's strength, public support. We need to a much better job in protecting ourselves.
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jdhlax Posted 2:57 pm
19 Oct 2005
So we have two sides here: those whose priority is the environment, and those whose priority is money and jobs. The only way to reconcile these priorities is to change the basis of our economy, beginning with a major simplification of lifestyles.
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Naturegal Posted 12:08 am
21 Oct 2005
The Tom DeLay's of the GOP don't care about job growth in Alaska. They care about getting access to off-limits, pristine wilderness. Because they know once they are in that Refuge, no place in America can be considered undrillable.
And yes, I agree that there is an effort to kill environmentalism. The Right sees it as a liberal, lefty, anti-capitalism, anti-corporate movement that does nothing but keep them from raping for profit. We get in the way of the Halliburton's of the world.
But I think it's unfair to say progessives have just given up the Arctic Refuge fight. We've been fighting a long time to keep that Refuge safe. And if not for election fraud, Al Gore would now be telling the GOP that the Arctic Refuge is not open for business.
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