$100 Permission Slip

I’m not against drilling for oil in the arctic, but I’m not really for it either. Unlike most of the liberals out there, I don’t think the world will come to an end if we allow oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, nor to I think the caribou will go extinct. However, unlike many conservatives, I don’t believe oil drilling in the arctic will lower my gas prices anytime soon or make a noticeable impact by the time production begins. Maybe if we’d drilled ten years ago a gallon of gas would be a few cents cheaper now, but we didn’t.

I believe that oil drilling can be accomplished without dramatically impacting the refuge in an adverse way. Unfortunately, I don’t trust our government officials to be able to accomplish it. Especially not after they’ve resorted to bribery to get the public’s permission. Anything they decide to do would certainly involve committees, appointments, huge salaries, extravagant expenses, and in the end they’d probably do a piss poor job of running the program. I also don’t trust the big oil companies like Exxon and Mobil to do the job either. They don’t exactly have great track records with the Alaskan environment. Does the name Valdez ring a bell?

So here’s the real problem we should thinking about: How do we drill in the arctic without destroying everything we’re trying to save? Make no mistake; we will have to drill for oil at some point in time. It’s inevitable. Gasoline is not the only use we have for oil and soccer moms driving Cadillac Escalades aren’t the only reason we have high gas prices. We use oil in some manner in the manufacturing processes of almost everything in this country and our dependency on oil continues to grow every day. Hybrid electric cars and vegetable oil diesel engines aren’t going to eliminate our oil needs. We will need the oil in the arctic at some point in the future.

So, we need the oil, we don’t want to ruin the caribou habitat, we don’t want to put the government in charge of it, and we don’t trust the big oil companies. So who do we put in charge? It shouldn’t really take a genius to make yes and no decisions about whether the drilling companies are maintaining good ecological etiquette and we can’t afford to let the government pay someone to make those decisions. So what we need is someone of average intelligence, who has lots of free time, and who will be willing to work for free in order to improve the human condition while saving the caribou.

It sounds like we may have finally found a use for some of those politically active Hollywood actors! Someone needs to get Sean Penn on the phone because this would be perfect for him. Not only would he get to actually do something useful and productive, but it would keep him busy and mostly off our nightly news as well. Maybe we could get George Clooney to help him.

So keep the $100 check and get Penn / Clooney on board to oversee the project. Until then, just leave the refuge for the wildlife.

Date Added: 02-05-2006