APRIL 6, 2006
A
recent mailing caught my attention and it might be of interest to you as well. How many acres are open to drilling for oil in five of our western states? A. 100,000 acres B. 1 million acres C. 10 million acres D. 110 million acres How many acres are not open to drilling in these same five states? A. 100,000 acres B. 1 million acres C. 6 million acres D. 10 million acres E. 100 million acres
The correct answers will be revealed at the end of this blatant commercial to help in stopping oil and gas companies from gaining access to publicly held lands. Rather than promote alternative fuels, sound and safe new technologies, and transition to a non-combustion engine oil based economy the present short sighted thinking says 'let's get all the oil we can regardless of the long term consequences, and let's get it now.'
Land too precious to compromise, owned by the public, and pronounced by previous generations as wild and natural is becoming threatened by the organizations designed to protect and preserve. The Bureau of Land Management is the name folks, and in its very title is the mandate to preserve land in perpetuity. The argument presently postulated is that no harm will come to the land because 'drilling beneath the surface' will not affect the ground above. Of course the drilling will all be done by helicopter and no new roads, buildings, drilling platforms, oil derricks, trucks or human encroachment on the lands will ever occur. Extracting oil without harming the environment is like having a tooth removed with no pain.
What no one wants to admit, but is true, is that day after day there are people working hard at finding ways to destroy our inheritance and our children's inheritance. Yes, many people in positions of trust and power are not thinking about the future, but only what they can gain in the present.
What are people doing about this? Some are willing to speak truth to power. Who is compromising our creation without regard for the future? They have names and faces and deserve to be identified.
And, if you said 110 million acres in Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming are already open to oil drilling and that 6 million acres are not, you would be correct.
AS the Wilderness Society emphasizes: Enough is enough!
--Peter