Re: I bet Iran and North Korea are a bit worried
12;<br /><br />1)exploit is a verb, meaning "to make productive use of ". If that offends you, tough luck. The rghtwingers have been trying to get into ANWR for years and now that the repubs have the keys to the kingdom, ANWR will no doubt be EXPLOITED sooner than later, and the caribou and the people who depend on them can just go to hell. Personally, I like rolmops' suggestion. Why not drill off the the Florida coast? Oh that's right, it turns out that even some right wingers don't want their beaches coated in tar balls either, or their "viewsheds" disturbed.<br /><br />2) no I don't trust the federal government or big business not to lie to serve their own interests, no matter which party is sitting on the throne. Remember Enron? Or was that too long ago? Nuclear power? DDT? Agent Orange? Waco? When did the repubs and right wingers develop such a fondness for and trust in the federal government? <br /><br />3) I'm not a leftist or a creationist, but I do believe in a higher power and that all "god's" creatures are equally important to "god". I haven't read the NYT in years. What are your news sources? The trustworthy Rush Limbaugh and Bill OReilly? <br /><br />4) Re: evolution and extinction. I am so sick of hearing people yap about how the salmon should just adapt to our destruction of their habitat and if they can't keep up, well too bad, extinction happens. It will happen to us too, if we wipe out everything we depend on for life, like clean water and oxygen, just to name a few. I think that if we keep on in the direction we are going, we will eventually have an envronment that looks like the middle east. remember that persia (iraq) was once the "fertile crescent" and that north africa was forested before the romans came along.<br /><br />5)Interesting that at the same time you are bashing the enviros and liberals for getting in the way of the dollar, you say you rest easy counting on them to protect what your party and their friends would destroy.<br /><br />6) As to children and grandchildren, all I have to do is look at what has been lost in my short lifetime and project that into the future. When I was a child, there were still lots of old growth forests and plenty of salmon, although both were way down from when my dad was a kid, and he had a lot less than HIS dad did. Given that the status quo is to consume our natural capital as fast as it can be turned into dollars, and that any who protest this trend are ridiculed at best and demonized at worst, the outcome seems pretty clear. And when we are talking about oil, I am pretty confident that my children will be living a different world when they are adults, whether ANWR gets EXPLOITED or not. <br /><br />And just a side note about ANWR, who says that the oil from ANWR woudn't just get sold to asia anyway? The oil companies have no patriotic urges to serve americans first. I live on the west coast, pretty dang close to alaskan oil, and I pay some of the highest fuel prices in the nation, higher than the east coast, where a lot of the oil comes from the middle east. This is partly because a lot of alaskan oil goes to asia, rather than the west coast of america.<br /><br />blah blah blah...<br /><br />all the debate that we have here is irrelevant anyway. The powers in the throne right now has their own plans for the world, and have never been interested in hearing anyone else's input anyway. we will get exactly the kind of energy policy that serves big money, big government and the status quo. Oil will be used to the last drop and sold to the highest bidder, species and indiginous people will be driven to extinction, the remaining old growth forests cut (to keep them from catching fire, of course!) and there will be no useful dissent or debate heard because we will be at war for the next thirty or forty years, and moving ever towards a security fortress state. You repubs seem pretty jazzed about this, so I hope it turns out like you expect. I'd sure hate to see YOUR local fish runs and forests wiped out and YOUR beaches covered in tar balls and dead seabirds.