There are some interesting debates about drilling for fossil fuels this week in the news. The Arizona Daily Sun published an L.A. Times article on drilling near national parks. Is drilling outside the park boundary legal? Some say that the 1916 Organic Act, which mandates clean air, water and other resources in national parks, would be broken even if the drilling were to be done outside of the boundaries of the park. You would be able to see the roads and see and hear the noisy construction equipment used to search for fossil fuels. Some of the heads of different national parks have spoken out against the Bush administration and say that he caused a problem that we will be fighting for years to come.
It seems energy companies always manage to find the bright side of global warming. Truthout reports that the melting ice caps are uncovering about 25 percent of the Earths oil and gas reserves. It seems also that there is somewhat of a dispute over what country will have the rights to these resources. The maritime law is a little unclear about how far from the coast line of a country gets to claim it's territory.
And while drilling rigs move into these newly uncovered lands, temperatures in Australia have been skyrocketing. Alternet reports that just last week a power station blew up in Melbourne due to absurdly high temperatures in the region, presumably linked to global warming. This caused the train to stop, stop lights blew and half a million homes were without power. There have several deaths that have resulted from these temperatures. The heat wave actually has been impacting professional athletes in the Australian Open tennis tournament. Some have even been taken to the hospital.
Ah, drilling. The answer to every problem.
-Royce Johnson
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This is the first post for our new Regional Roundup site. All the posts below are from the old EC blog.
Drill in Antarctica. Already it is melting at an increased rate, and we have plenty of labor thats used to the arctic conditions.
If the multination corporations had their way with antarctica we wont be helping us solve the problem...
The most ideal situation involving drilling in anarctica, would be to reserve it all in the name of emergency use only. also, this oil and gas could not be sold, but is on reserve to stem the economic and human damage it will incur once world oil supplies hit the limit. this fuel would be used only in drastic cases intervening to save life. it will not be sold to the rich. it will be under an International Petroleum Relief Trust that is dispensed based on need. Those deciding would be countries that have done the best to improve renewable energies. Any country that has not admitted global warming or has not made steps to making their country energy independent will not be allowed to decide.
So cheers to global warming, giving us more land to drill under!
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