Kat, hope you don't mind if I comment freely:

>"During the Reagan administration, the Department of >Interior found there was a chance of less than one in >five of ever finding recoverable oil > in the ANWR. If oil companies beat those odds and >strike pay dirt, both the Department of Energy and the >U.S. Geological Survey have said it >would most likely amount to a mere 3.2 million barrels, >which would only last a few months in meeting the needs >of American

I don't know what happened during the Reagan administration, but again, no one really knows how much oil is there without exploratory drilling and seismic testing, which will have minimal effect on the environment. They move the rig in winter over ice roads, spud the well, take core samples, and move off while the land is still frozen. If there were 3.2 million barrels recoverable, for instance, at a standard rate of recovery this would take on the order of five years. Most fields on the North Slope are still functioning after twenty years.

>It would also take about ten years to even hit the >market. Ninety-five percent of Alaska's North Slope is >available for oil exploration. Oil companies expect to >step up their production on the North Slope with >forecasted increases of 15-17%, all without opening any >of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

I don't see the relevance of when it hits the market if it is useful and necessary, but most of the infrastructure is already built. I believe for the right price it is feasible to hit the market in less than half of that time. There is no way production is increasing at the rate you quote. ARCO was advertising the slogan 'no decline after '99' before they were taken over by Phillips. There are other places to drill, but the oil people seem to be quite positive on the worthwhile-ness (forgive me Scrabble players) of ANWR. It costs them a lot of money to explore, so they must have some good reasons.

>"Americans consume 25% of the world's oil. America has, >at the most, reserves of 2-3% of the world's oil. Even >if we sacrificed all of our wilderness areas, parks, >coastlines, etc., we would never be able to become >independent of foreign oil; at our present rate of >consumption, there literally is not enough oil in the >ground for development."

I thought the idea was to buy other peoples' oil when it was cheap, exhaust their supply, then fall back on our own. (tongue firmly in cheek). There is a great line in Dickens, David Copperfield I think, going by memory only: "Annual income, 10 pounds, annual expenditure 9 pounds 19 and sixpence, result is domestic tranquility, happiness, peace. Annual income, 10 pounds, annual expenditure 10 pounds and sixpence, result is misery and the debtors' prison." By which I mean to say that the oil in discussioin is not negligible in the economy in which we find ourselves.

There is still plenty of oil in the ground, what determines whether it will be developed is the price. Remember, we are not going to suddenly run out of oil. We will eventually see oil prices rise and rise and not come down again. We are at the end of the Age of Cheap Oil.

>Consumerism is the bottom line in the battle for saving >our planet. What does it take to get people to give up >their gas-guzzling SUV's etc.?

Higher prices.