ANWR

Congress has (finally) passed a budget, and yet somehow they still found it necessary to destroy a pristine piece of land in Alaska, not to mention destroy wildlife patterns and disrupt the lives of people who depend on that wildlife. All for a bit of oil that will hardly last long anyway. Regardless of your environmental views, though, there are numerous reasons to be afraid of this legislation. The thing that scares me the most, actually, isn’t even the destruction of the environment- it’s the tactics used by the Republicans to pass this legislation. (Note: I am a registered Republican, so please don’t call me a liberal Republican basher. I’m not.) Regardless of your place on the political spectrum, or your thoughts on ANWR itself, the political maneuverings of the Republicans should scare you. Instead of holding to the concept of a government by the people, accountable of the people, the Republicans slipped ANWR through in an attempt (largely successful) to keep the population at large from discovering what they were doing- which doesn’t bode well for the American political system. I believe that the government should be transparent so that citizens can see and react to its actions, but the political movements of the Republicans reveal an attempt to hide their actions. First of all, the provision to drill in ANWR (the Alaskan National Wildlife Reserve) isn’t in its own bill, or even in a bill on energy policy. It’s in the budget, sandwiched between social security provisions and everything else. It’s not even included on the official summary of the bill. If an environmentalist was researching the actions of Congress, I don’t think section 201 of the budget would be high on his/her research list, and the provision on ANWR isn’t even included in the text of the bill posted online. Burying it in the budget reveals the Republican’s desire to hide this from a full and fair consideration in Congress, and they could at least make some sort of attempt to make the government transparent by including it in the text of the bill available online. Along a similar vein, it also shows the Republican’s successful attempt to force the matter without a vote actually on it. The Congressional vote was on a wide variety of issues, not just ANWR. Senators who opposed drilling in ANWR but supported other sections of the budget, or even those that didn’t like the budget but realized that we need one and Congress moves slower than molasses in the dead of winter, may have voted pro for the bill, even though they opposed drilling in ANWR. The vote doesn’t actually reveal Senators’ views on ANWR, because it was buried in the budget. In order to have a full and fair consideration of the option of drilling in ANWR, it should have been introduced in a separate bill that would have allowed Senators to focus on it, instead of on a multitude of issues, and vote solely on that issue. Also, that would have allowed regular citizens to see and understand the actions of the government, without having to read to section 201 of a very long and boring bill. This would permit them to participate in government, if they so desired, which is the important issue here. Who knows what else is buried in that mammoth bill? The Senate had less than a week to debate the bill, which was clearly not enough time for many of the Senators to truly read and contemplate the bill. They may not even know everything that they passed. What a wonderful state of the government- the people in power hide controversial provisions in a mammoth bill that they only give Congressmen a short time to review, knowing that few regular citizens will actually research the budget, and that Congressmen who oppose the provisions may still vote for the bill because of everything else in it. If Republicans were truly interested representing the people, they wouldn’t try to hide their actions from the people, which is obvious what they did.

Now, on the environmental issue- I am very opposed to drilling in ANWR, primarily for ecological reasons. Although I typically believe that the government should be as small as possible, this is one aspect where I believe the government needs to be involved. The preservation of our environmental resources is an important goal, for humanity’s sake, and this cannot be accomplished by individual action because it is irrational for people to do so. A wonderful example of this is the tragedy of the commons. The situation is this: There is a village with a common space where all the villagers can permit their animals to graze. However, because there are so many animals, the commons can’t support them all. In order to preserve the commons, it is rational for the GROUP to limit their use of it. However, for each individual, it is more rational for them to continue to use it. If they don’t, they need to purchase feed for their animals, which is a cost, but they can’t be certain that others are going to be the same. What if only one farmer purchases feed and everyone else doesn’t? Then the commons will still be destroyed, and it won’t matter that he bought the feed. On the other hand, if he permits his animals to graze and others buy feed, the commons will be saved even though he didn’t buy feed. Basically, whether or not he participates in the saving of the commons, he gains or loses based on what everyone else does. Therefore, why should he participate, when his personal participation is irrelevant? It’s more rational for him to continue to use the commons and see what everyone else does. Since that applies to all individuals, the end result is very few do anything and most continue to use the commons, which are destroyed. (If you’re interested, check out Mancur Olson’s The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups). Since we cannot rely on individuals to preserve the environment because it is irrational for them to do so, we need a group, for which it is rational to save the environment, to protect it. The strongest group in America today is the government, which also happens to be the only group with both power and resources to protect the environment, which is why I support government action for environmental protection.

On ANWR specifically, there are many reasons why the government should not drill. First of all, it is a wildlife preserve- how is placing a pipeline in the middle of migration paths going to preserve the wildlife? In fact it will disrupt their migration patterns, probably leading to problems for the wildlife, particularly caribou, which is likely to result in the destruction, or severe decimation, of their herds. Whether or not the destruction is as bad as environmentalists point, the ecosystems on both sides of the pipeline will be permanently altered, and not for the better. One part that relied on the caribou won’t have them, so any animals who fed on the caribou won’t be able to, and so the effects continue to expand. On the other side, wherever the caribou happen to get trapped, there are two possibilities. One, if the caribou don’t adapt to their inability to migrate, they will die off, and the animals that relied on them also will, and so on. Even if they do adapt, they will be trapped in part of the land where previously they were only for a portion of time. The plants need a break from the caribou to grow, which is accomplished while the caribou are elsewhere. If the caribou don’t leave, then the plants won’t have an opportunity to regrow, and they can only support grazing herds of caribou for so long. Once the plants are decimated, the caribou won’t have anything to eat, and yet again we face domino-like environmental effects. Unfortunately, this includes humans- various Inuit tribes rely in the caribou for food. I hope that humanity will at least provide some sort of food for them so they don’t starve, but what right has the government to take their food away from them? Do we need the oil so much that we can justify environmental destruction and removing a primary source of food for groups of people? Well, no. There’s not much oil there, anyway, and there’s actually incentives for preserving it for later use. As everyone knows, the Middle East isn’t exactly a stable place, but that’s where OPEC is based. So long as the USA still has other sources of oil, however small, we aren’t at the complete mercy of OPEC. If they raise their prices too high, we can threaten to use our own supply, which gives them an incentive to keep prices reasonable. Once we use our supplies, though, that incentive disappears and we are at their mercy. For those reasons, we should not be drilling in ANWR, and we also need to keep a closer eye on government, particularly since the Republicans have demonstrated their willingness to hide their actions from both other Congressmen and the American polity at large.

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