Stealth Budget Threat to Arctic Refuge [UPDATED]

More bad news about the 2006 proposed budget comes from the Wilderness Society via Common Dreams:

Despite the fact that the vast majority of Americans oppose drilling for oil in the Arctic Refuge, some members of the House and Senate are quietly pulling out all the stops to try to pass a highly controversial drilling proposal. They would do so by attaching the drilling measure to the upcoming budget resolution, a backdoor maneuver designed to bypass both popular sentiment and a lack of support for the measure in Congress.

More below.

The Wilderness Society has a Petition here which will be sent to your Congressmen and Senators. Please take a moment to sign it.

I read somewhere recently - maybe in a dKos diary? - that Bushco isn't really interested in the Arctic Refuge except as a means by which the oil companies can access more lucrative fields in California and Florida. This means that once again they want to sacrifice our common heritage for their short-term gain.

Your representatives in Congress may not be interested in knowing any more about this subject, but I think we ought to draw as much attention as possible to the letter found here signed by more than 1000 scientists, including Edward O. Wilson, who say that

Sacrificing this ecosystem for an insignificant supply of our nation's energy that will not reach the market for more than a decade does not represent balanced resource management.

I'm increasingly afraid that no one in Washington wants to listen to our scientific experts anymore, but although neo-cons like to knock it, science remains the cultural heritage of all human beings. It represents our continually evolving and growing store of knowledge about the world we live in. The current administration's desire to replace science with wishful thinking and fantasy would be grounds for firing in better days.

Update [2005-2-24 18:2:58 by Miss Jones]: After reading Agathena's comments about big oil's lack of interest in the Arctic Refuge itself, I looked around a little more and found that they lost interest years ago in some cases. From the Boulder Daily Camera (sign-in required):

It's been more than two years since BP, the world's third-largest oil company, withdrew its support from Arctic Power, a lobbying group leading the charge to open ANWR. ChevronTexaco pulled out of Arctic Power in 2000. ConocoPhillips followed suit last year. ExxonMobil, meanwhile, continues to support the lobbying effort financially, though its public enthusiasm is tepid.... (snip)

Meanwhile, Interior Secretary Gale Norton is busy repeating familiar ANWR propaganda points. She falsely claims that drilling will affect only 0.01 percent of the refuge. And she dubiously contends that ANWR contains 10.4 billion barrels of oil. (At peak production, such a reserve might satisfy about 4 percent of America's demand, an amount that could be offset by imposing higher mileage standards for cars.)

As The New York Times reported this week, oil companies don't seem to believe Norton's projections. The Times quoted an unnamed Bush adviser as saying the oil companies wouldn't take ANWR leases if they were free.

If you haven't already done so, please sign the Petition! You could be helping Florida and California and other protected areas too.