I intended to post about the complicated relationship between blogging, exhibitionism, and line drawing as related to the Miranda line of cases; however the Senate’s endorsement of oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge compelled me to write about that first. Look for beautiful agony over the weekend, along with my pre-season rankings of classes just in time for registration on Monday.

Additionally I have to say that, “I Will Follow You into the Dark” by Deathcab for Cutie and “Apple Blossom” by The White Stripes are two amazing songs that I’ve been listening to throughout the day as I wrote this essay between catching up in crim pro, so I thought it was relevant to mention them. Without further ado:

Drilling in Alaska (Warning, this is long and rant-like, though structured around the theme of: power, greed, and stagnation-oh my!)

I absolutely can’t believe that our senators voted to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Preserve for oil drilling-and there has been little reaction in opposition or outrage-am I way off base here? This is perhaps the worst revelation to come out of an era characterized by an administration full of mishaps. The blatant political posturing behind this vote bleeds of self-serving image-building to thwart complaints that the government is doing nothing to augment rising gas and heating costs. It smacks of yet more opportunity for the oil industry to capitalize on what can only be considered a renaissance period since the new guard took office, and finally it is another endorsement of a commitment to maintain this status quo of reverence for the almighty oil barrel rather than propel our country into an era beyond dependency on fossil fuels.

I’ll stop right here if yesterday’s action is seriously going to have a positive impact to help Americans get through this winter, especially in disaster recovery zones. I mean, that’s why this was done right? To help people now, to make it seem like the do-gooders in Washington are making things better. Of course they understand that not everyone has a travel allowance or receives stock dividends from oil companies to help offset those higher utility bills. Clearly that’s why they are opening up one of our national treasures so that we can start extracting oil in TEN YEARS. The vast network needed to bring the operation to full capacity wouldn’t even be running at peak levels until 2025! Even then, it will barely make a dent in the oil projected to be consumed by our power-hungry nation at that point.

So I’m pretty sure I’ve got the image thing down right. Sure, it takes time to build these things-I have no doubt that if it could take less than five years to have this thing up and running, it would happen tomorrow. It has to start somewhere and this is a great time to get the ball rolling as everything else in the news is bad from Iraq to Argentina. Why not suggest that help might be on the way? Obviously and somewhat understandably, for those living on the fringe, a lower gas price is more important than environmental preservation in a faraway region. However, the key is that this won’t help anyone, and when it does start to “help” satisfy our thirst for oil, its effect will be barely negligible. Given this, it makes much more sense to in the very least protect an asset that we can all share and take pride in for generations to come-the oil will run out someday. I have never been to the Arctic National Wildlife Preserve, but I’m glad we have it as our answer to the Serengeti and maybe someday I’ll get to see it. Shouldn’t our elected officials be helping make the best choices for citizens, not squandering a national treasure for something that really only pays off in cheap political returns for their seats, their power.

EDIT: I decided to contribute the unabridged version of this post to The Democracy Shot. If you are interested, just follow the link and look for “>” to denote where the above continues. Another “>” indicates where the paragraph below picks up. This post was just too long for Previously Unpublished, but I wanted to get my point across!

Ironically before I saw the news, I was reading a recent issue of National Geographic featuring Africa. The coincidence is that I looked for a long time at a picture of a girl skipping over oil pipes running through her Okrika, Nigerian village with shrubs and life bustling around it. But you know how when you are a little kid taking a trip to an art museum and the curator says close your eyes and then open them and whatever you focus on first is what the good artist meant to be important in the painting? Well, the pipes sure stood out in this photo and I don’t need anyone to tell me that that is not what is supposed to be the focal point of the Alaskan coast.

We have some bad artists in Washington. We all have our opinions that may differ, but I can honestly find no truly redeeming benefit to the enormous cost this allowance will toll on the environment just by existing. And wow are those two Republican Senators from Alaska loyal to their party or what?-aren’t their constituents just beating down their doors? I’ll admit, I might be missing the local dynamics, because for all I know Alaska is in favor of this move since it may well open up lots of jobs for locals. (What, eco-tourism isn’t beating out the drilling industry in the revenue department?) I just found it curious how the leaders of the opposition were from Washington state and Oregon and the local representatives involved seemed to be all for this. I just know that I would be less than pleased if we decided to start drilling in Yosemite. And as much as I love Yosemite, I have to believe the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve is ten times better if anything because it’s so raw.

End rant. This is not characteristic of what I imagine will be a normal post on this site, especially in terms of length because no one normally wants to read a long, unwieldy post unless it involves something that directly interests them: effective blogs are usually bite-sized pills that are easy to swallow quickly. I was just incensed when I saw the headline on cnn.com last night and this is a topic that interests me personally and I didn’t want to relegate it only to the politics website since although it deeply involves politics, it seems more like a values call to me-why are we really doing this and isn’t one of our wildlife preserves worth protecting overall over the small advantage gained for just a few? Oh yeah, the link: Senate Endorses Oil Drilling in Alaska Wildlife Refuge. Amazingly, I couldn’t even find the equivalent story on New York Times online.

I’m not sure I’ll sway any senators to reconsider with that little outburst, but I feel a little better.

-jd