- Joined
- Sep 2, 2008
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- 353
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- Political Leaning
- Slightly Liberal
Its called research. They have to lease it so they can do more complex surveys to determine if its worth developing further. Your environmental argument is valid though, and worthy of debate. Its simply not the argument being made here by oil critics. Theres an environmental argument to be made against alternatives as well. Windmills kill animals. Hydro blocks fish spawning. Solar takes up tons of land and uses rare metals. Nuclear produces waste. Natural gas requires drilling. Hydrogen is risky and requires electricty to create (which comes from coal).
Or maybe the oil companies want to lock up the land until it makes better economical sense to extract the oil. Since oil company profits always remain high as ever, why would they want to create more supply when it would only lower the price?
While I'm not for opening ANWR for reasons which consist of saving natural beauty and wildlife to not turning National Parks into oil fields, I'm also realistic enough to think we should save ANWR's oil for a rainy day. The Mojave is a vast desert and can certainly absorb solar panels, windmills can be built in non-migratory paths, Bonneville Dam, for one, has locks for spawning salmon.
The nuclear waste issue needs to be solved and as far as NG is concerned, again, I'm not opposed to drilling, just not on, or near, our national treasures. Hydrogen needs advances in technology. If the country can back lunar landings and space exploration, it should also back alternative energies. We're going to need it.