RE: Energy Policy / Junk Science Environmentalism

As much as I have been tempted to respond to Janice's snippets (after all,
~90% (or more!) of her e-mail is regurgitated from various web sites), I
don't think we should bother. Remember that all this correspondence ends up
in the ASA archives.

Canada feels very strongly about drilling in the ANWR because of its
importance to the Porcupine Caribou and other wildlife. (see:
http://www.canadianembassy.org/environment/development-en.asp). The USA has
already lost the passenger pigeon and, most likely, the ivory-billed
woodpecker (although there continue to be rumours of sightings). I wonder
how many species have to be sacrificed on the altar of consumerism and
extravagance before common sense sets in.

Chuck Vandergraaf

  _____

From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On
Behalf Of Michael Roberts
Sent: Thursday, December 15, 2005 4:45 PM
To: asa@lists.calvin.edu
Subject: Re: Energy Policy / Junk Science Environmentalism

Janice, where do you get this stuff from?

 Area 1002 is 1.5 million of ANWR's 19 million acres. In 1980, a
Democratic-controlled Congress at the behest of President Carter set area
1002 aside for possible energy exploration. Since then, although there are
active oil and gas wells in at least 36 U.S. wildlife refuges, stopping
drilling in ANWR has become sacramental for environmentalists who speak
about it the way Wordsworth wrote about the Lake Country.

Ca\n you tell me, where and what is the Lake Country? Which state is it in?
Or is it possible as he mentions Wordsworth he menas the Lake District,
which I can see from my bedroom window?

 There are no trees.

There are no trees in much of the Lake District!! Perhaps it is north of the
tree-line. Landscape can be beautiful without trees - desert, high mountains
etc
  
The primary goal of collectivism - of socialism in Europe and contemporary
liberalism in America - is to enlarge governmental supervision of
individuals' lives. This is done in the name of equality.

Which country in Europe is he talking about? This is just ignorant nonsense.
Does he know anything about Europe?

People are to be conscripted into one large cohort, everyone equal (although
not equal in status or power to the governing class) in their status as
wards of a self-aggrandizing government. Government says the constant
enlargement of its supervising power is necessary for the equitable or
efficient allocation of scarce resources.

Therefore, one of the collectivists' tactics is to produce scarcities,
particularly of what makes modern society modern - the energy requisite for
social dynamism and individual autonomy. Hence collectivists use
environmentalism to advance a collectivizing energy policy. Focusing on one
energy source at a time, they stress the environmental hazards of finding,
developing, transporting, manufacturing or using oil, natural gas, coal or
nuclear power.

more exagerated nonsense!

A quarter of a century of this tactic applied to ANWR is about 24 years too
many. If geologists were to decide that there were only three thimbles of
oil beneath area 1002, there would still be something to be said for going
down to get them, just to prove that this nation cannot be forever paralyzed
by people wielding environmentalism as a cover for collectivism.

The most intelligent statement in the whole article

E-mail George Will at georgewill@washpost.com.
Received on Thu Dec 15 20:53:28 2005