ANWR: "...one of the bleakest, most remote places on this continent, and there is hardly any other where drilling would have less impact ..."

Who said that? The Washington Post!!!

Jonah Goldberg is a national treasure.

Livin' in a Frosty Paradise?
ANWR is not as pristine as it's cracked up to be.

Sen. John McCain said this week he would not drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for the same reason he “would not drill in the Grand Canyon . . . I believe this area should be kept pristine.”

Pristine means unspoiled, virginal, in an original state.

One wonders how pristine the Grand Canyon can be if it has roughly 5 million visitors every year, rafting, hiking, picnicking, and riding mules up one side and down the other. Campfires, RVs, and motels that do not conjure the word “virginal” ring around large swaths of it.

Read the rest.

UPDATE:

Jonah Goldberg provided a copy of the Washington Post editorial from 1987.

Here ya go...


The Washington Post
April 23, 1987, Thursday, Final Edition
Caribou vs. Motorist

SECTION: OPINION EDITORIAL; PAGE A22

LENGTH: 414 words



IT'S THE CARIBOU versus the motorist, again. Secretary of the Interior Donald P. Hodel has recommended opening part of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to oil drilling. That was what the oil companies hoped he might do. A predictable shriek has gone up from the defenders of the refuge. The decision is up to Congress.

Environmental quarrels always seem to generate billowing exaggeration. Another major oil discovery in Alaska would certainly be convenient, postponing the effects of the decline in Prudhoe Bay production that the government expects within the next year or so. But it's not quite so vital as Secretary Hodel suggests. With or without more Alaskan wells, oil production in this country is likely to stay on a downward trend.

As for the caribou, however, oil drilling seems very unlikely to be the dire threat to them that their friends here in Washington claim. While the two cases are not entirely comparable, the Interior Department points out that the number of caribou around Prudhoe Bay, 60 miles west of the refuge, has tripled in the 19 years since oil operations began there. The aesthetic objections to oil drilling may be substantial, but the caribou do not seem to share them.

Preservation of wilderness is important, but much of Alaska is already under the strictest of preservation laws. The area that Mr. Hodel would open to drilling is 1.5 million acres, running about 100 miles along the state's north coast near the Canadian border. He points out that adjacent to it is an area five times as large that remains legally designated as wilderness, putting it off limits to any development whatever.

Human intrusion on the scale of oil exploration always makes a difference in a landscape. But that part of the arctic coast is one of the bleakest, most remote places on this continent, and there is hardly any other where drilling would have less impact on the surrounding life.

Drilling in the Arctic Refuge is not crucial to the country's future. But there is a respectable chance -- about one in five, the department's geologists say -- that exploration will find enough oil to be worth producing commercially. That oil could help ease the country's transition to lower oil supplies and, by a small but useful amount, reduce its dependence on uncertain imports. Congress would be right to go ahead and, with all the conditions and environmental precautions that apply to Prudhoe Bay, see what's under the refuge's tundra.

Thanks Jonah. Loved your book "Liberal Fascism"