So lets see, a lot of the oil we're taking out of the North Slope is being sold to Korea so we need to open up Anwar so they can sell more oil to Korea? To solve the California energy crisis (where less than 1% of the power is from oil fired plants)? Makes perfect sense to me. That and if you read the article, Loeb makes it sound like the Alaska pipeline caused the animal population to increase. A real win-win situation

Unless we are willing to reduce energy use significantly, (and find alternatives)is there an alternative to opening up Alaska? Or National Parks in the Rockies for natural gas? Forget SUV's and Jacuzzi's. Know how much power it takes to keep Yahoo or eBay on-line? Or Mudcat? Some of the big providers are talking about building their own power plants to run their server farms. Fuel cells and fusion power may be the answer but no one knows how to get there yet. The belief that necessity is the mother of invention begs the question and ususually only works as hindsight.

Anyone from Canada know much about the McKenzie Pipeline Commission? I came across a reference to it in a book on technology and democracy. Their take was that the head of the Commission (Thomas Berger I think), rather than just listen to the experts, environmentalists and oil company front men, also held hearings throughout the area of potential impact. And actually listened to what the people living there had to say. The final decision was based on input from all sides and resulted in the pipeline not being built right away, and when it was, it bypassed the McKenzie Valley. (If my memory serves).

Updates and such would be appreciated but it sounds like a pretty good way to go about such things if it has to be done.

Regards

John