Yesterday, the US Senate voted to allow drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge up in Alaska. This has been a hot debate for a while now, and previous attempts to push a bill through congress has failed. Well, this time the bill managed to pass the Senate by a vote of 51-49.
This turn of events deeply troubles me. Reading the article on MSNBC, it's not looking like opening this area up to drilling will have a large, if any, effect on the price of oil and our dependence on foreign imports. They are talking about not even leasing land until 2007, and oil would not begin flowing out of the area until 10 years after that. Why not take the next 12 years, and investigate other energy alternatives? Wait, that has been tried, but it's all about the bottom line, the (very weak) US Dollar.
What really angers me beyond the deliberate destruction of our wild resources, is that this vote went mostly along party lines, with all of the Democrats voting no and most of the Republicans voting yes. The Republicans like to refer to themselves as the party of morals. They ran agains Gore on the morality platform, and they continue to try to introduce moral (regligious) ideals into our legislation. What moral lesson is this teaching our children where it's worth the price of a few million dead or disturbed animals just to make a couple of dollars? One of my favorite wildlife photographers' mantra is "no photograph is worth sacrificing the welfare of the subject". Moose Peterson's mantra may be specific to his line of work, but the general idea is something that the entire world should adopt.
I applaud the few Republicans that voted with their conscious and said "no" to the passing of this bill, but more work needs to be done to educate our lawmakers and populous at large of the dangers of tinkering with the balance of nature for a small profit.
Irony...
In an unrelated article about the Schiavo case in Florida, one Republican said “This provides a safety net where the government stands up for the vulnerable who don’t otherwise have a voice.” What about the animals rights? Or do they not count?