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Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), the crowned jewel of the nation’s 544 refuges is in danger of destruction (Lamar and Markey 12). ANWR has been in existence since 1960 and has slowly become one of the most controversial topics to hit Congress. ANWR is composed of 19 million acres on the northeast coast of Alaska. Although the government has been provided with this immense land they are fighting to gain more land. Why? ANWR is the second biggest oil field that is owned by the U.S. Now the government wants more land to construct oil reserves. The refuge is home to many endangered species such as migratory birds, polar bears, and wolves (Lynne and Roberts 1). Most of ANWR’s designated oil area is owned by indigenous Alaskan people (Klyza and Ford-Martin 1). Though these are some of the concerns when debating to stop any further drilling, the more prevalent matters to anti-drillers are; the caribou species, duration of changes (benefits), and why keep a bill that contradicts already existing federal acts.
As mentioned earlier, the caribou is a sensitive matter to environmentalist and Alaskan natives. The Porcupine caribou herd is the most concentrated species, 130,000 (Lamar and Markey 12) that roams on ANWR territory. The herd uses ANWR as its calving grounds (Whitten 2008). To each herd there is a distinct calving area (Markey 2004), building a spiritual and survival connection to the land itself. If drilling does continue the number of species will decrease, it has been proven in other caribou locations! The Central Arctic Caribou resided on Prudhoe Bay starting with 23,000 herds after oils reserves began to expand in that area numbers drop to 18,000 (Whitten 2008). ANWR specialists have also figured out that mos...
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...s Resource Center . Gale. GILA RIDGE HIGH SCHOOL. 20 Feb. 2015
Klyza, Christopher McGrory, and Paula Anne Ford-Martin. "Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (1980)" Environmental Encyclopedia. Eds. Marci Bortman, Peter Brimblecombe, Mary Ann Cunningham, William P. Cunningham, and William Freedman. Vol. 1. 3rd ed. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale, 2003. 1 pp. 2 vols. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Gale. GILA RIDGE HIGH SCHOOL. 20 Feb. 2015
Markey, Edward J.. "The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Should Remain Off-Limits to Oil Drilling. ."At Issue: Foreign Oil Dependence. James Haley. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2004. Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center. Gale. GILA RIDGE HIGH SCHOOL. 20 Feb. 2015
Will, George F. "The Biofuel Follies. " Newsweek. 151.06 (Feb 11, 2008): 64. General Reference Center Gold. Gale. GILA RIDGE HIGH SCHOOL. 20 Feb. 2015
My opponents 1st/2nd/3rd contention was the drilling in the ANWR will harm the environment. This is absolutely incorrect. Lets put this into perspective, the ANWR is 19.6 million acres out of Alaska, which is 240 million acres. The proposed drilling in the coastal plain will be 1.5 million acres. Now, with the new technology we have today, we can tap into the 1.5 million acre oil supply with an oil area that is 2000 acres. 2000 acres is 1/10000 or .0001% of the ANWR. 1.5 million acres of oil and a minuscule possibility of harming at max, 1/10000, I repeat 1/10000th if the ANWR. (Arctic Power)
Zielinski, E. (2012, April 25). The Northwest Forest Plan. Retrieved from U.S. DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIORBUREAU OF LAND MANAGEMENT: http://www.blm.gov/wo/st/en/info/history/sidebars/ecosystems/Northwest_Forest_Plan.html
The environment needs protecting because even before the drilling started hunting was rapidly decreasing the amount of animals in the area. So if drilling occured in Alaska the animal count would go down even more. Drilling is gonna need space, and because Alaska is a mountained and woodland area they will have to make space by destroying trees etc. Destroying trees means destroying animals’ homes. According to document E ‘just look 60 miles west to Prudhoe bay- an oil complex that has turned 1,000 square miles of fragile tundra into a sprawling industrial zone containing, 1,500 miles of roads and pipes’. Also the document states that the would be
December 15, 1971.. Alternate Citation:. Public Law 92-195; 85 Stat. 649 (GPO). United States Government Accountability Office, “Bureau of Land Management”.
Although industrialization revolutionizes America, it possesses devastating effects on nature. In 2003, The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge was threatened by plans of oil drilling and the construction of roads and pipelines. In response, former United States President Jimmy Carter crafted a speech, found in the foreword to book written by Subhankar Banerjee, with the intent of protecting the reserve. By utilizing diction, imagery and pathos, President Carter was effective in convincing America to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
In the foreword to "Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: Seasons of Life and Land, A Photographic Journey," former US President Jimmy Carter voices strong opposition to proposals that aim to industrialize areas of natural tundra in Alaska. He urges readers to look beyond short term financial gain and to protect nature’s innate beauty. In order to persuade his audience that the Arctic Refuge should be preserved, Carter develops pathetic appeal through the use of personal anecdotes, precise word choice, and evocative imagery.
Committee on Senate Energy and National Resources Subcommittee on National Parks. 3 June 2003: ESBCO. Mission Viejo Library., Mission Viejo, CA. 31 July 2005. http://web31.epnet.com/citation.
...ealthy men were getting into helicopters with high powered guns rounding up big groups of caribou and shooting them. The men would then take the racks they wanted and leave. Farley checked out an incident on this and found everything about it to be true. People were using the Caribou for their own fun and games and slaughtering what keeps the tundra alive in the winter.
On March 27, 1989 the supertanker Exxon Valdez ran ashore in Prince William Sound, Alaska, spilling approximately 11 million gallons of crude oil. The oil soon spread into the waters of south-central Alaska from the sound of Kodiak Island to the Kenai Peninsula (refer to Figure 1 for a map of the area). Almost immediately, news media arrived at the site reporting images of oil-stained beaches and wildlife to the masses. News coverage centered around the environmental devastation which would result from the spill. The coverage, for the most part, reinforced stereotypes of Alaska, as a pristine wilderness and Exxon as a greedy, irresponsible oil company. These images stressed the negative consequences of the spills and ignored ...
Potential Health and Environmental Effects of Hydrofracking in the Williston Basin, Montana." Serc.carleton.edu. Carleton College, n.d. Web. 26 Mar. 2014. .
Tyner, Wallace. “The U.S. Ethanol and Biofuels Boom: Its Origins, Current Status, and Future Prospects.” BioScience. August 2008. Vol 58 (7):646
The United States relies on imports for about forty percent of its crude oil, which is the lowest rate of dependency since 1991 according to the U.S Energy Information Administration. Today our country is trying to keep on track in becoming less and less dependent. When it comes to the topic of the future ways the United States will get its fuel, most of us readily agree that the United States should become more independent by using natural gas that is already here on our land. Where this argument usually ends, however, is on the question of the consequences drilling for natural gas brings. Whereas some are convinced drilling is safe, others maintain that it is actually in fact dangerous. Hydraulic fracturing or "fracking", the terms for drilling for natural gas, is dangerous to our public health and to the environment because of the water contamination it causes. Therefore, it is not something that should become a project for alternative fuel used by the United States.
Mr. Middleton, a journalist, compiled an article describing, in his opinion, the flaws of the Endangered Species Act. He then attempts to back his opinion with studied analyses, researched facts, and testimonies. To summarize Middleton’s (2011) perspective, “Rather than provide incentives for conservation and environmental stewardship, the Endangered Species Act punishes those whose property contains land that might be used as habitat by endangered and threatened species” (p. 79). This quote is broad and generalized yet draws in readers and forces Middleton to spend the rest of the article backing this statement with more logic based facts.
Endangered Species Act (ESA) protects not only the decimation of endangered species, but it also helps to recover and ultimately delist endangered species when they are no longer in danger of extinction. When an animal or plant is listed, it becomes illegal to capture, hunt, collect, and therefore destroying the habitats in which they live. Debates on whether to repeal and reform the ESA, or leaving it alone have been going on since the 1940s. The Endangered Species Act needs to have better parameters set in place to provide resources where it is most needed. Legislators need to amend the ESA in order to better help the plants and animals fighting
One claim that really stuck out throughout the entirety of the essay was the penalization and discrimination land owners receive under this act. Throughout the article, Seaholes heavily focuses on the “land-use control provisions” and how the Act effects public and private landowners. Seaholes claims that stripping the ESA’s land-use controls would create a solution to this problem, when in fact it will do nothing but create a less stable environment to those endangered animals and produce more bad than good. Land-use control is very important because not everyone has the same idea when it comes to needs, interests, and lifestyles. So, stripping away land use control will affect the sustainability of endangered animals in a number of ways. Taking away land use controls would affect our environmental values. Land owners would have complete control over the destruction of native wildlife and habitat, control over how and where they remove their waste, and control over the endangered animals that may live on the property. Giving land owners complete land control would also effect and decrease