Socialists and “Planet Savers”
You may have seen the show trial this week of the oil company executives before the House Judiciary Committee. If you watch Fox News, you may have even seen California’s Rep. Maxine Waters (D) threaten to nationalize the oil industry, according to the video clip at Gateway Pundit.
Enough background, though. One reason for the climbing gasoline prices is that the oil companies are not able to drill for oil in large tracts of America, e.g., the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). As George Will wrote for Newsweek earlier this year:
“ANWR's 10.4 billion barrels of oil have become hostage to the planet's saviors (e.g., John McCain, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama), who block drilling in even a tiny patch of ANWR. You could fit Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Connecticut and Delaware into ANWR's frozen desolation; the "footprint" of the drilling operation would be one sixth the size of Washington's Dulles airport.” (emphasis added)
For a picture of just where in Alaska, ANWR is, Mark Perry has a nice map of ANWR and Alaska as well as a picture of just how desolate ANWR is at his blogsite, Carpe Diem. Take a look, and you are likely to agree with Will, who concluded that:
“Energy policy has become a mare's nest of environmental and national-security fallacies. Energetic rethinking is in order.”
Are most members of Congress capable of the "energetic rethinking" needed, however?