crispycreme
Well-known member
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Amid the backdrop of soaring oil and gasoline prices, a sharply divided Senate on Wednesday voted to open the ecologically rich Alaska wildlife refuge to oil drilling, delivering a major energy policy win for President Bush.
The Senate, by a 51-49 vote, rejected an attempt by Democrats and GOP moderates to remove a refuge drilling provision from next year's budget, preventing opponents from using a filibuster -- a tactic that has blocked repeated past attempts to open the Alaska refuge to oil companies.
The action, assuming Congress agrees on a budget, clears the way for approving drilling in the refuge later this year, drilling supporters said.
The oil industry has sought for more than two decades to get access to what is believed to be billions of barrels of oil beneath the 1.5 million-acre coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in the northern eastern corner of Alaska. (Map)
Environmentalists have fought such development and argued that despite improve environmental controls a web of pipelines and drilling platforms would harm calving caribou, polar bears and millions of migratory birds that use the coastal plain.
Full article can be read here:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/ALLPOLITICS/03/16/arctic.drilling.ap/index.html
I don't even know what to say. I'm afraid this will set legal precedents for opening up all sorts of now-protected public lands for commercial purposes. The mother of all slippery slopes.
A terrible, terrible day for naturalists around the world. |=(||=(||=(|