Nitwits Rant, But ANWR Passes

The budget bill moved out of the Senate with a provision for ANWR oil leases intact, as a move by Maria Cantwell, D-Wash, which would have stripped ANWR from the budget bill, failed 51-48.

Any Nitwit Will Rant on ANWR, and Cantwell did, as quoted by AP:

"Using backdoor tactics to destroy America's last great wild frontier will not solve our nation's energy problems and will do nothing to lower skyrocketing gas prices"

If I had a nickle for every last great wild fronteir, I'd be able to fill my gas tank for life. Alaska is one huge great fronteir and next door are similar huge fronteirs in Canada and Russia.

And not providing new sources is going to solve our nation's energy problems? Not providing new sources is going to lower gas prices? Sounds like Cantwell would have been a great Sec of Treasury in a Kerry administration.

Also ranting were environmentalists, who argued:

Environmentalists said drilling platforms and a spiderweb of roads and pipelines will threaten the ecology of the refuge's coastal plain which is used by caribou, polar bears, musk oxen and millions of migratory birds that land there during warmer parts of the year. They have referred to the area as North America's Serengeti, a reference to the African wildlife paradise.

They made the same dire predictions in the 1970s, when their target was the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. They were wrong then -- if they had been right, there wouldn't be caribou et. al. on the ANWR plains to worry about -- and they're wrong once again now.

ANWR will be developed using modern, low-impact techniques under intense regulatory scrutiny.

But this isn't about ANWR as much as it is their desire to force us out of cars and shut down fossil fuels so their dreamed about clean technologies can take over. But there are no viable clean technologies -- except gasoline, the most efficent, and increasingly, the most clean-burning fuel the world has ever known.