So this is what got my bile up on my way to work this morning. I was listening to NPR, here. There was a story on the Chukchi oil lease sale yesterday, and how there were record bids yesterday.
There's also a NYT story, here, which summarizes the big bidders, topped by Shell with bids totaling about $2.1 billion.
DKos folks have been paying a attention to this topic - amidst the endless campaign diaries - but today this is what really got my ire up, this was thrown in at the tail end of the NPR story:
Shell, and the Minerals Management Service, hope it's the first of many lease sales before the administration changes hands.
This sort of fratboy attitude (all apologies to you responsible greek society members out there) amongst corporations during the Bush admin isn't even hidden from us anymore. Let's get away with as much shit as we can before the new dean shows up. He's a real hard-ass, he'll make us actually be responsible! Better go have a beer with Dean Dubya while he's still here. (This is EXACTLY why we should be voting against the guy "we'd like to have a beer with", he's the guy that post-beer proceeds to get behind the wheel and drive the country, er, his car, straight into a tree. Bush has apparently managed to hit every tree he can see.) Don't want to turn this diary into a "US as Animal House" rant, but it does piss me off.
But the oil lease sale in conjunction with this cavalier attitude REALLY pisses me off. It actually makes me look forward to the relatively slow burn the FISA debate process has been giving me. I'm not sure what we can do, those of us not locally up in the area, it sounds like locals are protesting. (from NYT)
Protesters braved temperatures of 13 degrees below zero, holding signs that read, "Chill the Drills," "Don’t spoil my dinner" and "I prefer whale oil."
Under the sale, the agency envisioned moving the oil by a pipeline built from Northwest Alaska to the trans-Alaska pipeline, which moves North Slope oil to tankers in Valdez.
"My worst fear is that they have an oil spill," said George Kingik, the former mayor of Point Hope, an Inupiat Eskimo community southwest of Barrow.
And conservation groups are focused, as well: (from NYT)
Conservation groups say development of offshore oil fields will add stress to a rapidly changing environment hammered by global warming and record summer ice loss.
"It’s irresponsible to move ahead with the lease sale in light of global warming and its immediate effect on the Arctic," said Trish Rolfe, Alaska region representative of the Sierra Club.
I know that to a certain extent, it's a waiting game, we have to let the environmental assessment process play out, keep a hawk's eye on that, be vocal about problems, try and keep that tied up. Pushing to get the polar bear listed as threatened is a good idea, as well, although, there again, i'm not sure who we could push.
Anyway, just bringing up again another of the endless topics we can't lose sight of. Jan 20th can't come soon enough...
I'll leave you with this closing thought from the NYT article:
The director of the Minerals Management Service, Randall Luthi, said he was confident development could occur without harm to the environment.
Coming from this administration, all i can say is "Brownie, you're doing a heckuva job."
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