Alaskans explain me this? Why are Alaskan politicos gung-ho about drilling/destroying their own wildlife reserve and hence, annual dividend of $1000+?

and ted stevens is a nutcase.

Gesundheit.

If the US government, or any sort of international group, stated a long-term plan of how we're going to wean our way off of oil dependency with consumption falling at a calculated rate over the next twenty years, I'd say that it might be great to open up more drilling. As it is, there's lip service given to long-term planning and a lot of scrambling and uncoordinated efforts. I have no inclination to believe that the world won't just suck these oil reserves dry.

Anyway, "ANWR," the Republican political issue, is pretty much a shell game. It's designed to cast the whole oil issue as one of wimpy, childish Democrats trying to protect caribou (I see the defending troops in the great war on christmas could care less about reindeer) while the big adult Republicans are trying to solve our Hard Problems, while obscuring, for instance, the GOPee defense of Detroit's unwillingness to move on CAFE standards. Part of me wants to say fuck it and just give them the issue so they'd shut up, but we don't really need to given that we have enough Rockefeller/Goldwater Repubs still on hand to protect the wilderness/ecosystem values.