Cumulative Environmental Effects of Oil and Gas Activities on
Alaska's North Slope
Download the 4 page Report Brief:
http://books.nap.edu/html/north_slope/reportbrief.pdf
Read the Full 452 Page Report Online:
http://www.nap.edu/books/0309087376/html/
http://www.sitnews.net/0303news/030503_nas_report.html
Effects of Oil and Gas Development Are Accumulating On Northern
Alaska's Environment and Native Cultures
http://www.alaskawild.org/pressroom_mythsfacts.html
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge - Myths & Facts
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http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0325-22.htm
Published on Friday, March 25, 2005 by the Boston Globe
Hot Air and Global Warming
by Derrick Z. Jackson
Every time the world calls for action on climate change, the United
States emits more White House gases. The latest puff came from James
Connaughton, the director of environmental quality, during last
week's conference of 20 nations that met in London to attempt once
again to make global warming a global priority.
At the conference, British economic minister Gordon Brown said,
''Climate change is a consequence of the build-up of greenhouse gases
over the past 200 years in the atmosphere and virtually all these
emissions came from the rich countries. Indeed, we became rich
through those emissions." Connaughton's response, in an interview
with the British Broadcasting Corporation, was, ''We're still working
on the issue of causation."
Brown said, ''We now have sufficient evidence that human-made climate
change is the most far-reaching and almost certainly the most
threatening of all the environmental challenges facing us."
Connaughton's response as to what he referred as ''the extent to
which humans are a factor," was, ''They may be."
Brown said, ''The industrialized countries must take responsibility
first in reducing their emissions of greenhouse gases." Connaughton
complained instead that the target in the Kyoto treaty for the United
States to reduce emissions ''was so unreasonable in our ability to
meet it that the only we could have met it was to shift
energy-intensive manufacturing to other countries."
Two days after dismissing coalition building, the United States went
back to emissions building. The Senate, by a vote of 51-49, finally
approved oil drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. On
efforts to stop global warming, Connaughton said, ''We are trying now
to find a portfolio in which three words are important: technology,
technology, and technology."
He meant drilling, drilling, drilling. Two years ago the National
Academies of Science said that even with improved technologies,
drilling on the north slope of Alaska has degraded the tundra,
altered wildlife patterns, and has resulted in social problems that
blunt claims of unqualified economic progress. Many scientists have
said that the oil in the refuge is so relatively minuscule that we
would be better off if we simply made our cars more fuel efficient.
Although Connaughton claimed we are ''trying to find" technology, we
refuse to use it. The National Academies has for years said the
technology exists for more fuel efficient cars. But Congress and the
White House, imprisoned by the oil and auto lobby, refuse to raise
them.
The vote to drill in Alaska was parallel to another Senate vote to
deny an additional $1 billion for Amtrak when studies show that
well-developed rail systems can slash traffic and thus global-warming
pollution. The United States consumes a quarter of the world's oil
and produces a quarter of the planet's greenhouse gases despite being
4 percent of the population. Yet when Brown said that the
industrialized countries must take responsibility first, we become
the most immature adolescent on Earth, doing precisely the opposite
of what we need to do.
Earlier in the month, the former chief scientific adviser to the
British government, Lord May of Oxford, bluntly compared Bush to a
modern-day Nero. Last fall, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said,
''If what the science tells about climate change is correct, then
unabated it will result in catastrophic consequences for our world.
The science almost certainly is correct."
At the recent London conference, Brown said, ''Environmental issues
including climate change have traditionally been placed in a category
separate from the economy and from economic policy. But this is no
longer tenable. Across a range of environmental issues, from soil
erosion to the depletion of marine stocks, from water scarcity to air
pollution, it is clear now not just that economic activity is their
cause, but that these problems in themselves threaten future economic
activity and growth."
Nero and his fiddlers would hear none of that. Asked last month what
the science was on global warming, Connaughton said on CNBC, ''There
are many different views."
The science ceased to have many views years ago. The very first
sentence in the executive summary of the 2001 National Academies of
Science report on climate change begins with, ''Greenhouse gases are
accumulating in Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities .
. . " The report further said, ''Global warming could well have
serious adverse societal and ecological impacts by the end of this
century." The science continues to choke under the White House effect.
© 2005 Boston Globe
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