paulsol the Righteous wrote:
I think the point is that the oil companies are driven by motivations of short term profit for thier shareholders. Transparent gestures to 'environmental concerns ( solar panels on the roof of BP station for example) aside, they will happily drill for oil anywhere they think that a profit can be made.
Ok. But you can apply that to every single for profit business in existence as well. The company that made the chair you are sitting on, the computer you are using, the wires and cables that make up the internet you're using to post, the clothes you are wearing, etc, all of those companies have the exact same motivation as the oil companies. All of them use resources (in most cases 'non-renewable' resources) to make their products or provide their services.
That, by itself, is not a reason to condemn them. You need more then just "OMGZ! They're just in it for the money!!!".
Quote:
'Environmentalists' (And when I use that term, I mean people who see the planet as something more than a short term profit margin)...
Let me stop right here and point out that it's amusing that I've said before (In this, or another recent similar thread) that many environmentalists are not so much pro-environment as anti-industrialist. I just find it interesting that your parenthetical definition of environmentalists basically says they're opposed to the very thing you defined the oil companies with (and which, as I pointed out, actually applies to all for-profit business).
Quote:
...realise that drilling in ANWR, for example, will achieve nothing, except perhaps slightly delay the inevitable, whilst permanently blighting one of the fast dwindling regions of natural wilderness left in the world.
Will drilling anywhere else do anything different?
I guess what I'm driving at here is this: Is this really about the specific case of preserving the pristine wilderness of one region of Alaska, or is this really just about opposing the method of using oil to power stuff period. Because, once again, your argument applies to a much wider case then just the one we're addressing here. By your definition of what they're opposed to, it's oil in general.
Which is fine. But then what do we replace the oil with? What alternatives will be available to us in a shorter time frame then opening up more areas for drilling? Cause I keep hearing this "But it'll be X years before a single drop will result..." argument, yet no one's put that in the context of an alternative?
Without presenting a realistic alternative, it's kinda hard to put much weight in the Dems arguments. They can bash the idea of drilling in ANWR. They can point to how little it may help. But some improvement is better then no improvement, which is what they're offering (actually, they're offering to make things worse, but that's a separate issue).
Quote:
Trashing huge regions of the planet in the hope of slightly delaying the general realisation that oil is finite, is not in their (our) minds, a price worth paying.
Huge regions? Do you have any idea how absolutely tiny the area we're talking about it? In a region with almost no plant or wildlife at all?
And "Trashing"? Care to defend that? Looking just at ANWR, I would think if you want to get an idea of the environmental impact, looking at Prudhoe Bay would be a good start. Exactly how decimated have the Caribou been by the drilling there? How despoiled is the environment?
I just think it's kinda hard to make a realistic argument that the environmental impact of drilling there could possibly outweigh the benefits of drilling there. We're talking about virtually zero environmental impact. Some experts have even suggested that the heat from the pipes has helped the Caribou thrive. It certainly hasn't hurt them one bit...
Place a "cost" on the impact and compare to the cost of the oil we could gain. It's easy to make some broad, vague and over stated argument about trashing the environment, but how much trashing has really happened? Not much really. Not from the drilling of oil anyway.
