In 1923, President Warren G. Harding designated 23 million acres on Alaska's North Slope as a national petroleum reserve. The ecologically sensitive northeast corner of the reserve -- which includes pristine Lake Teshekpuk and is vital habitat for breeding caribou, migrating birds, and Inupiat Eskimos -- was closed to energy development by the Reagan, Bush Elder, and Clinton administrations. But damned if the current administration won't pull out all the stops trying to access it! The Bushies tried in 2005. They tried in 2006 -- twice. Last fall, a judge blocked the administration from its quest, saying it had failed to consider environmental impacts of drilling in the area, and ordered the Bureau of Land Management to develop a new plan. Yesterday, the agency obliged, offering a vague proposal which suggests various options for development. The BLM will offer final recommendations after a two-month public-input period, which starts Friday. So get thee to inputting!
sources: Reuters, Associated Press, Fairbanks Daily News-Miner
comment on the plan: Bureau of Land Management website
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Comments
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caniscandida Posted 6:40 am
21 Aug 2007
My understanding is that petroleum speculators are now looking less at the coastal plain of ANWR, the annual retreat of the Porcupine herd of caribou, and more at the possibility of drilling offshore. Presumably that would complicate the lives of the Inupiat of Kaktovik, not at all to their liking.
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
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GRLCowan Posted 11:52 am
21 Aug 2007
--- G. R. L. Cowan, former hydrogen fan
Oxygen expands around boron fire, car goes
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caniscandida Posted 4:58 pm
21 Aug 2007
Curious, how ancient laws, written way before their legislators could have had any idea what issues might be affecting us today, have a way of popping up out of their coffins, now to cheer, now to horrify.
Consider how Mitt Romney -- major jerk, who has been lately more majorly jerkifying himself every time he opens that pathetic jerky mouth of his -- , back when he was governor of Massachusetts, appealed to an ancient law about restricting marriage practically to residents of Massachusetts, from, like, the Teddy Roosevelt administration, intended to stop mixed-race couples from running to MA to get married; such a union would surely cause trouble, if a black-and-white couple married in MA went back to their home state of, say, VA or SC. In order to prohibit an entirely different kind of fish/fowl story (or, rather, a more profoundly fish/fish story, I guess), he used that precedent to prohibit the granting of marriages to same-sex couples from outside of MA.
Jerk.
God save America, from the likes of Mitt Romney.
Anyway, never fear, we got married in Montreal. LWD was Best Dog. Our wedding banquet was Lebanese take-out. "Civilization finds a way," selon ce que je pense, et grace a` Notre Dame, Saint Joseph et Sainte Anne.
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
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Sarah K. Burkhalter Posted 2:23 am
22 Aug 2007
The NPR-A was created by President Warren G. Harding in 1923 as "Naval Petroleum Reserve Number 4" during a time when the United States was converting its navy to run on oil rather than coal.
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GRLCowan Posted 3:07 am
22 Aug 2007
--- G. R. L. Cowan, former hydrogen fan
Oxygen expands around boron fire, car goes
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