Genie:

Your message is kind of self-contradicting. You start off claiming that the government is subsidizing the oil and gas industry, and then bemoan the fact that it won't do the same thing for solar and wind. Well, in fact the governments, fed. and state, are soaking up a lot of money from oil and gas and coal. My State government is almost totally run off of it (no state income taxes). Wind power does not pay for itself yet which means that oil money is being used to finance wind power in my State. (This should make you happy).

It makes me happy, because we SHOULD be expanding our technological capabilities, and why not finance it by taxing oil and encouraging conservation. It's win-win, and the only people who are gonna get upset are the guys who take the pipes out of their Harley mufflers and those fine men and women of NASCAR.

The Alaska pipeline was designed to take a bullet and live. It has taken a few already, and this is the first time one penetrated. The Daily News had a cool picture with the camera posed almost in the jet of leaking fluid. It's not enough of an argument to restrict ANWR IMHO. This part of the pipeline runs through inhabited (by our standards) area and there are some nasty people in that area. If this yahoo hadn't been shooting at the pipeline he'd of been shooting at a person, most like.

It isn't getting into any water tables or streams. It's spoiling some acreage of tundra, and it will be cleaned up much better than was possible with Prince William Sound.

ANWR development will/would consist of shorter, smaller runs of pipeline with only professional oilfield workers and herds of caribou, none of whom wish to mess with the integrity of the pipeline.

We can't stop building things because people are gonna shoot at 'em and fly planes into 'em.

Courage.