And hooray for the women.

[icarus]

The Seattle P-I has a front page photo of the victorious Senator Maria Cantwell, who fought off her Republican challenger, holding up the hands of the other senator, Patty Murray, and Washington Governor Christine Gregoire. All three of them grinning.

The three most powerful positions in Washington State are all held by women.

This is what my mom was hoping for.

Here's a pdf of the photo: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/frontpage/seattle_pima1x320061108.pdf


Maria Cantwell is one tough senator.

Even under the the Republican leadership she managed to head off oil drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge. At the beginning of the election year the Republicans were gunning for her because she had stood up to them, and won. The Alaska senator (a corrupt bastard called "the pork king" famous for his expensive "bridge to nowhere") was madder than hell and swore to cut off tourist routes from Washington to Alaska in retaliation. Never mind that this hurts Alaska more than us. After ANWR I swore she has my vote for as long as she wants the job.

Now she's returning to D.C. under a democratic leadership. This powerhouse belongs in Washington.

Comments

[amalthia]

Hey i'm so glad these women won. :) Really we need more women in power.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I didn't even realize it until I saw the paper. Wow. Women run Washington.

Icarus

[wenelda.livejournal.com]

blue is my second favourite colour. next to green.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Heh. It's not my favorite color, but after this week I may change my mind.

[indigoarc.livejournal.com]

Thanks for posting this, I didn't get a paper yesterday. Wow, I am so proud of my state and my country right now -- and when was it that I last felt *that* way?

"The three most powerful positions in Washington State are all held by (Democractic) women." And yay for Speaker Pelosi too!

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

All over town I saw that the P-I was sold out while the Times was still had plenty of papers. It wasn't until I saw a copy of that photo in a ma and pa shop that I realized -- wow. No wonder.

Icarus

[alyndra]

Ted Stevens is one of the best arguments I can think of for imposing term limits on congressmen. Unfortunately, I suspect this may be a pipe dream.

The problem is that he's been there so long, he's accumulated enough power that it's very much more in Alaska's best interests to keep him there than to elect a newbie. There's an attitude of 'everybody's trying to get benefits for their own state, the only difference is that he's better at it. If we didn't get the money, someone else would.' How true that is I don't know, but I remember my jaw dropping when I read about those two bridges.

The ANWR issue -- I think is a little more complex than 'evillest plan ever'. I'm all for the environment, but I think this issue has been blown a little out of proportion. For example, it's not at all true that the caribou herds would be destroyed by this, or even significantly damaged.

Also only a small part of the area in question was actually meant to be a permanent wilderness area. Most of it was just set aside by the government as a 'we'll decide later what to do with this' land. (That's the technical, term, obviously. *g*) Well, later's come along, and it's a bit irritating to not be allowed to do anything with this land because environmental groups (none of whom are actually from Alaska) are decieving people into thinking it's sacrosanct.

At least, this is what I remember from my dad from some years ago. I'm not actually familiar with as many of the details as I should be.

But the fact is, I think we should be utilizing any and all reasonable means at our disposal to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. Alternative energy is great -- and it's one of the great crimes of the Bush Administration that they haven't been pushing it for all it's worth -- but it's not going to be enough, not immediately, and domestic drilling, like it or not, is better than buying it from the Middle East.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Ted Stevens is proud of his title "the king of pork" and that alone... man. The logic of "well, someone else would get the money" could also be phrased "well, someone who actually needs it might get the money" and purely grasping at the money itself without using it for something worthwhile (building for the poor in the Alaska, perhaps? Or creating an oil infrastructure that doesn't rely on the threatened permafroast currently threatened by warming trends?). Getting the money for its own sake and wasting it is worse than not getting the money at all.

The problem with drilling in ANWR is that there isn't much oil there. Even we could tap it tomorrow without disturbing so much as a snowflake, it would provide for about 1-2% of the U.S. needs, for a very short period of time.

People visualize the ANWR as a vast field of quick emergency oil when in reality it is a small amount of oil spread over a large area that's difficult to reach. Does anyone actually believe that we would have set it aside in the first place if it were as rich as the oil fields of Houston or Iraq?

The other reason we were willing to set it aside is that the oil is in a form that is both expensive and difficult to extract. If the bill passed, the oil execs admitted that it would ten years before they would even be able to begin to tap that oil.

In addition, the current extraction methods of that type of oil essentially boil down to putting the the grist of the oil through a meat-grinder. Regardless of caribou herds, the destruction of the landscape would be considerable -- which is why it is so expensive and difficult to extract, and why we were willing to set it aside in the first place.

Getting oil out of the ANWR is like getting water out of a cactus. There's not much there, it's not easy to do, it wrecks the cactus, and there are much better options.

I propose we explore E5 biodiesel fuel. We have these farmlands that are currently propped up by farm subsidies because of world food prices. Why not make them prosperous? Take advantage of the American bread basket? Brazil has been using E5 for over a decade and greatly reduced their dependence on foreign oil, plus it's relatively easy to make the changes to automobiles so they can run on E5 -- Ford has already volunteered to do so.

Icarus

[alyndra]

I didn't say I agreed with the Pork Principle. *g*

After I posted, I decided I'd probably better read up a bit, since this isn't the first time the ANWR topic has come up.

Oil fields on the North Slope are 25% of the US's domestic oil production, and we import about 58%. So, Alaska already provides about 10% of the oil the US consumes. Estimates say ANWR could be as big as the biggest of the fields up there, Prudhoe Bay, and could keep going for 30-50 years. I think 1-2% is a pretty conservative estimate. Nobody agrees on how many billions of barrels, but there almost certainly are billions, not millions.

Anyway, any percent at all of the national consumption is frickin' huge. If we measured, say, wind power, in the same way, we might conclude it wasn't worth it either.

I guess I don't know anything about the 'type' of oil, or the extraction methods. Do you happen to have a link?

I do know it always takes them a while to start up, partly because of all the red tape that's set up in the way. They spent ten or fifteen years getting Prudhoe Bay operational.

The thing is, the oil companies are asking for 2000 acres, out of 19 billion. Think about those numbers a minute. And the area they're looking at . . . when Prudhoe Bay was first looking around for how to get it's oil to market, "The environmentalists' favored route crossed the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Range (later renamed "Refuge") into Northern Canada. Their reasoning was, they said, that the coastal plain of ANWR "had no redeeming qualities whatsoever."" Here, third paragraph down.

My dad's flown over that area. He said the scenery didn't change at all for hours. It's literally a really really big wasteland. The fraction of it that would be affected is minuscule in comparison.

E5 sounds really cool. I'm all for it. I just don't think we're at the point yet where we don't have to bother with oil anymore. I'd love it if we were, but we're not.

Part of me wants to wish that we'll get suddenly, dramatically cut off. The oil will run out, the supply lines get cut. That would motivate us to get our asses in gear and do something about both the amount of energy we consume and the renewability of it. But then my fantasy is ruined by the knowledge that if it really happened, it would probably create more problems than it solved.

I realized I didn't even comment on the point of your post -- Woot! Women in Washington! That's really fantastic.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Oh, I didn't say you were. I was agreeing with you. That money would be better spent dealing with the permafrost issue that could break oil lines.

When I have time I'll dig up Cantwell's research. This is not a knee-jerk environmentalist reaction, but a well-researched option she's rejected after having examined it. That's Cantwell's style.

Part of the delay would be red tape, and part of it is the fact that IIRC we don't have the technology to extract the oil in the first place. They still have to develop the means. This is not a puddle of oil like Iraq where all we need is the equivalent of a straw.

I'm well aware that every Alaskan citizen gets a yearly dividend from the oil industry, so there's a vested interest in ignoring any environmental experts.

Yes, yes, I know what it's like. In Michigan we had these smelly, mosquito-infested mud-holes that we called swamps, and the environmentalists called "welands" essential for the survival of the endangered blue heron. The herons looked like they were doing just fine, scooping up fish in front of our house and shitting on our dock, but I guess there weren't a lot of nesting grounds on our freshly mowed lawn.

As for E5, we already use it as an additive in gasoline. It's grown from corn, and there's new technology that could produce it from cellulose. Here we have entire swathes of farms dependent on subsidies. We can easily turn those subsidies into investments into the distilleries we need to produce E5, thus saving both the American farm and weaning us steadily off non-renewable oil.

The oil industry has their own long-term plans. Bush has quietly sanctioned nuclear production in Texas.

Icarus

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Oh. That should say "wetlands."

[alyndra]

I don't understand why you say we don't have the technology to extract the oil. Nobody's asking the government to subsidize the oil companies; the oil companies are sure enough that they can get enough oil, efficiently enough to make big profits, to go through all this stink in the first place. And those profits don't just go to the oil companies; the US and Alaska governments get big shares.

Is the oil under ANWR somehow different from the oil to the east and west, which has been being drilled for years?

You could probably make a case that our oil can't be extracted quite as efficiently as the stuff in the Middle East: but that doesn't automatically mean that we should give up on it and just buy all we need.

BTW, the dividend has nothing to do with the current status of the oil industry; it's all money that the state got from the oil decades ago. It sits in a really big bank account and every year half the interest is apportioned out. Which is really nice, don't get me wrong. But I don't think you can claim that it makes us ignore environmental concerns. The North Slope is very regulated, and has come up with lots of the advances made in the oil industry to be more ecologically friendly.

"There have been no scientific studies by regulatory agencies, academic institutions, or industry that document population decline of any species in the arctic related to oil industry activity." (PDF.) If there's a case to be made, someone should make it. But jumping to conclusions because big-corporations-are-scum helps no one.

I'm also not sure what you mean by 'the permafrost issue'. It's not like permafrost was recently discovered; the oil pipeline was specifically designed with it in mind. I don't recall lines breaking due to permafrost in the almost thirty years oil's been flowing through the pipeline. I could be wrong, of course.

I don't expect ANWR to solve all our energy problems. At the end of the road, it's only a few more drops in the bucket. In fact, if I thought that curtailing domestic oil drilling would force us to turn to renewables, I would totally oppose ANWR.

Here's the thing though: it won't. We'll just buy more foreign oil. And I think that causes problems for our economy, for our government, for our stability, and for the economies, governments, and stability of those we buy it from. Also, we're more environmentally conscious. The ships we use are safer than the ships they use to cross the Atlantic, which don't even have double hulls.

I think we have to do everything we can to reduce our foreign dependence by however much we can, even if it's only a few more drops in the bucket. And that includes E5, it includes ANWR, and it includes a hell of a lot more that still won't be enough. But it'll help.

The oil will be sold to China. Not us.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

The only reason oil companies want to drill in the ANWR is to increase their profits. ANWR oil will only increase our domestic oil reserves 0.0033% and will not be able to serve more than 2% of our oil needs. That's useless.

Alaska residents support ANWR drilling because they get a generous yearly dividend from the oil companies. They also have been fed some very heavy PR.

Your PDF files are from an organization founded for specific purpose of selling people on drilling in the ANWR. That information is in no way unbiased or even-handed, and for that reason, completely unconvincing. It goes on old data and ignores the U.S. Geological Survey on the ANWR as if it never existed, even though the Geological Survey includes 12 years of research. The document on the environmental impacts of drilling on 300,000 acres was slapped together in less than a week, and I strongly suspect that's the document anwr.org draws on.

Beyond that, the spin in the documents you provide is as obvious as PETA brochures on the meat industry. No offense to PETA or anwr.org, I am against killing myself and if I were already for ANWR drilling perhaps what they have would be enough. But it's hard to miss the spin and as such, they're ineffective.

Yes, it's a different type of oil. I don't have time to dig around, you're on your own for that, but it's shale-oil or somesuch.

Here's why drilling in the ANWR won't help us.

The oil prices have jumped not because of trouble in the middle east, but because of China's demand for oil due to their rapid industrialization. This is information I have from a friend inside the oil industry.

Unless specific laws are passed on the sales of ANWR oil, the oil will not be sold to the U.S., will not ease our energy costs, but will go to China and simply line the pockets of the oil companies.

Oil companies fully intend to prevent competing energy sources so they can demand top dollar for the remaining oil in the world. E5 can be blocked for sale at gas pumps by the oil companies, and according to 60 Minutes, the oil companies have already penalized gas stations that provide E5.

Anyone who believes that the oil companies have our best interests at heart and will, out of generosity and concern for the American public, drill in the ANWR and then sell their oil at a lower price worldwide -- passing up the high prices caused by China's demand -- you've got to be kidding. Of course not.

Icarus

Re: The oil will be sold to China. Not us.

[alyndra]

Okay. I didn't remember that about China. I think it's probably true that there's a lot of PR bullshit going on in this debate -- on both sides. I've probably fallen for it at some point.

The only reason oil companies want to drill in the ANWR is to increase their profits.

*laughs* Of course. I never thought they were out for anything but money; that's what companies do. I'm just saying, any situation where we as a country are importing more than we're exporting is not a viable long-term situation. I don't expect them to lower prices at all; that's not what it's about.

Also, maybe this is a minor point, but if the oil companies all imploded tomorrow, it wouldn't change Alaskans' yearly dividend. That money belongs to the state and the fund hasn't relied on new money from the companies for most of my lifetime (I'm 20.) Such an implosion would severely upset the economy, yes, and lots of Alaskans would be very unhappy, but not because of the dividend.

On the other hand, preventing other energy sources, bad capitalist. No cookie. Still, is anything short of direct legislation (which hopefully will happen with more Dems in Congress) going to stop that kind of thing?

Thanks for the debate. I'm going to bed now, but it's been very interesting, and I'm glad I've done some fact-checking because of your comments.

Re: The oil will be sold to China. Not us.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

It's helpful to know that the yearly dividend is invested and Alaskan residents aren't being paid capital gains, but a steady dividend on the investment. On the other hand, it does create a, shall we say... generosity of feeling? :)

If the amount of oil gained from the ANWR would increase domestic oil reserves only .0033%, and supply only 2% of U.S. needs -- how much would that change domestic exports? The ANWR would fill far less that 2% of the world oil demand, making even less difference in our trade balance with the rest of the world.

Much of our economic imbalance has to do with the Iraq war. We are borrowing from China, Britain, and... *snaps fingers* Denmark I think it is... to fund that war. In 2000, the U.S. budget was not only balanced, we had a surplus. In just six years Bush has squandered that surplus and put us more deeply in debt than we've ever been.

All China has to do is trade their money in Euros instead of U.S. dollars, and the U.S. economy would flounder. This is an incredibly stupid blunder on Bush's part.

As for the argument that what's good for the oil companies is good for America -- we must remember that in the age of multinationals, we can't consider the oil companies (or other multinationals) "American" companies.

Dick Cheney's Halliburton, for example, avoids even light American corporate taxes by being incorporated off-shore. 60 Minutes visited those offices a few years ago, and far from being the corporate HQ, it was a false front. Halliburton is also guilty of defrauding the tax payers of immense amounts of money, by selling oil into Iraq for one amount and then charging the U.S. government three times its value. Yet they still have contracts in Iraq.

Shutting down competiting products like E5 is not okay because it "can be expected." This is monopoly behavior. This is what got Microsoft in trouble and they were saved only by the republican elections.

But there are other problems with the oil industry at the moment. Where are these price increases coming from? Despite the increased demand from China, OPEC has noted that the price per barrel of oil has not drastically shot up in the last six years, yet prices in the U.S. have nearly doubled since Dick Cheney has been in power.

Recall that Dick Cheney (ex-CEO of Halliburton) met with his friend, Kenneth Lay, the ex-president of ENRON guilty of price fixing in CA, to work together in establishing U.S. energy policy. Cheney refused to turn over his notes from that meeting in the prosecution of Kenneth Lay, but there are provisions in our energy policy -- specifically related to ENRON's interests in India -- that benefited only ENRON.

At the end of year in 2005, all of the oil companies posted record profits. Profits that are not tied to the price of crude oil, announced only a month following the Katrina disaster. Oil companies' industry websites declared that they suffered only minimal damage during Katrina, yet prices shot up. When the senators proposed an investigation of these record profits, prices eased.

Note that again, right before the mid-term elections, gas prices gently eased.

Prices don't do that. That's not market forces at work. That's what prices do when someone's at the switch. It's price-fixing, and it's illegal, and I'd like to see a scathing investigation. Until now, we've been hamstrung by the current "Dracula Congress." Maybe we'll see something new this year.

The oil companies have been staggeringly corrupt, have cheated the U.S. in Iraq, have cheated on their U.S. taxes, have ripped us off at the gas-pump for record-breaking profits -- why would anyone give them more money from the ANWR?

It is not in our interests to do so. The only benefit would be some jobs in Alaska (because at least workers pay their damned taxes). But a longer-lasting job base would be created with the natural gas line from Alaska down through Canada to the U.S. That will also supply a great deal more of our energy without critical loss to our environment.

Icarus

Re: The oil will be sold to China. Not us.

[alyndra]

We've been borrowing from other countries a lot longer than that. Bush, for all his faults, just exacerbated a problem that already existed; he didn't create the problem.

"Generosity of feeling". . . I'll give you that. Especially since every Alaskan also knows that oil profits are the main reason the only state tax we have to pay is a property tax.

(The past decade or so, there's been a runaround where the state says they need to create a sales tax or income tax, and the voters say no, cut your stupid spending, and the state whines that they can't, they need more money, if not a tax they'll have to dip into the Permanent Fund, and then the voters throw a hissy fit. The state can't touch the PF without massive voter approval. But they still get lots of money from oil and from their pet congressman, they're just so used to getting more and more that they've utterly lost the ability to balance a budget.)

I don't consider many of the things that government and big business do 'okay'. Monopoly behavior is expected when there is, in fact, a monopoly, but I never said I thought it was okay. I just said that fighting over ANWR wasn't going to change it.

Is it terrible of me to say that I don't have a problem with rising gas prices, in and of themselves? As far as I can tell, it's one of the more effective wake-up calls we can get. Of course, I don't have a car, so maybe I would feel differently if I did.

Obviously manipulating them to suit the political climate, that's bad. But if ANWR contains such a tiny insignificant amount of oil, and it's really so expensive to extract, then what does it matter if they get one more field?

Unless it's really about the political consequences. That's the trouble with any issue this huge. It's gone way beyond the simple facts of the case, the lines in the sand have been drawn, and everybody's lined up to butt heads until it's not really about the issue anymore, it's about winning or losing.

In the end, we're going to run out of oil. The only question is whether it's sooner or later. Do you really think that when that happens, we won't be scraping the bottom of the barrel for every last little drop? Someday they'll get approval for ANWR. And personally, I'd rather they got it over with sooner rather than later.

A pipeline straight to the US is very ambitious. I seem to remember the companies claiming that they couldn't justify the cost unless they could drill in ANWR too, but very possibly this was just another tactic.

I won't have web access this weekend. My dad and I will be at his brother's place, and alas, there's no wireless. *g* I'll be thinking about this issue some more, though. Thanks!

Re: The oil will be sold to China. Not us.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

As far as I can tell, it's one of the more effective wake-up calls we can get.

I agree with you there. The irony is that the price-gouging has made people, even conservative organizations like 60 Minutes (the average viewer age is what? 50?) call for alternative fuel. Six years ago that was tin-hat territory.

Is it terrible of me to say that I don't have a problem with rising gas prices, in and of themselves?

Ripping people off is fundamentally wrong. Raising your price because the oil price has increased is reasonable. Raising your price because you can makes it harder and harder for people to live.

Of course, I don't have a car, so maybe I would feel differently if I did.

Yes, of course you would. But gas prices effect everything, from the price of food (because of transportation costs) to the price of electricity, to the cost of a movie ticket. Not having a car doesn't mean you get away from the price of gas. It hits you in other ways.

Icarus

Fact-checking.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Your information on ANWR is incorrect. For example, you've said that there has never been an environmental impact study on the ANWR, when in fact the U.S. Geological Survey has a 12-year study on the environmental impact to the ANWR.

If you got that tidbit from anwr.org, you need to find another source, because anwr.org is lying (or misinformed) on at least one count, probably more. You cannot trust the information you get from that source, and it will make you sound like an industry shill if you rely on them.

"Nothing of value in the ANWR." *rolls eyes* Remember that environmental science has improved a great deal over the last 100 years. They've moved from the idea of "It's pretty, let's save it" to a deeper understanding of how ecological systems interlock, and the importance of diversity in terms of Darwinian survival. It's no longer a beauty contest. :)

Icarus

Re: Fact-checking.

[alyndra]

Probably they just worded it very carefully rather than outright lying. I noticed at the time that there were lots of qualifications; that's why I quoted it instead of paraphrasing. I probably shouldn't have used it at all, though: you're right.

They've moved from the idea of "It's pretty, let's save it" to a deeper understanding of how ecological systems interlock, and the importance of diversity in terms of Darwinian survival.

Which could be seen as a way to justify 'let's save everything we possibly can, and never mind even trying to evaluate what might be more important or less important'.

I'm getting the impression that you'd oppose setting up another oil drilling site no matter where it was or what kind of environment it was in. Which is fine, I can respect that, and see where you're coming from too, but I'm still not convinced that ANWR is more precious than any other piece of wild land. It's just being used as justification for fighting the oil companies. :)

Re: Fact-checking.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Probably they just worded it very carefully rather than outright lying.

And they're available online, while the 12-year US Geological Survey is a massive paper tome. I'm fairly sure it's available to U.S. citizens though, and a copy can probably be requested through your local library from the Library of Congress.

Which could be seen as a way to justify 'let's save everything we possibly can, and never mind even trying to evaluate what might be more important or less important'.

*laughs* Too true. The ANWR protectors do start to sound like the opening lines of Star Trek: "The ANWR... the final frontier...."

There's a bit of American nostalgia going on. We were founded as a frontier nation, and Alaska is the last state that has any real frontier left. Seattle in particular is filled with families whose relatives came west for the Yukon gold rush. They didn't stay in Alaska but there are strong emotional ties, stories handed down through two or three generations. Then there are a lot of people in the fishing industry who are stuck on factory trawlers but yearn for those mountains; going to Alaska has a certain mystique.

For me personally, I believe that the oil in the ANWR was set aside as a (minimal) supply of last resort, and we're not there yet. The only reason to start breaking ground in the ANWR now is to milk more profits out of the for the oil industry.

Experts have determined that it would cause some real damage to the area, and I believe them. When you can't get the species or land back the way it was, it's better to be conservative.

Clearly the price far outweighs the miniscule gain.

I'm sickened by the corruption and price gouging I'm seeing from the oil industry, and have been since they raised prices after Katrina. I did a lot of industry research following Katrina and found that they announced on their own industry sites that they had almost no damage to their off-shore oil rigs, limited damage to their oil lines, and the problems with the oil refineries existed before Katrina.

In the process, I learned they had an entire fleet of helicopters maintained in that region that could have saved drowning people in New Orleans. Instead, they flew out to their rigs -- right over the drowning people -- checked the damage, and then quietly parked, letting everyone die.

I'm not inclined to help those cold-blooded, price-gouging motherfuckers make any more money, no.

Erm. I feel rather strongly about it. I would be against drilling in the ANWR for environmental reasons regardless, but I have been utterly disgusted with the oil industry barons for the last year.

The oil companies know that there is very little oil left, and that we're using it up faster than we projected because of China. No one could have predicted the populous nation in the world suddenly becoming industrialized.

They're in what they know is an industry that has an end-date, so they're trying milk it as much as possible. To that end, they're opposing alternative fuels to keep the price of oil high. They hide the environmental impacts, and they it's quite possible they'll hide how low the oil supplies get. (Who knows? Maybe the reason they want ANWR is because they know there's a lot less oil than we think?)

The result of their utter lack of ethics and concern for the welfare of humans will be that when we do run out, we'll be in suddden, serious trouble. Unless we fight them, get the alternatives in place, and save the oil they don't want us to save.

Icarus

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Oh, and -- yay, women! Twenty years ago, who thought so many women would be in power?

Icarus

[alyndra]

I know! Just skimming through election results for MN, it was really amazing to notice how many women there were . . . without counting, it seemed to be fairly fifty-fifty. I looked and sighed happily.