You’ve heard the controversy for years.  We can’t drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (Alaska, USA) because it will destroy the environment and kill the wildlife in the area. At every turn, the environmentalists say NO to drilling for oil anywhere in the country.  But ANWR is a great illustration of how these silly people operate on emotions rather than facts and common sense.

Consider the following illustration:

The state of Alaska is the largest state in the union.  As you can see, it stretched the entire height of the mainland and covers the entire midwest!  Alaska is enormous.

ANWR is an area in the NE corner of Alaska that is about 19 million acres.  It is about the size of the state of South Carolina.  The Coastal Plain, where the oil is, is about 1.5 million acres.  The area under consideration for oil production is in the Coastal Plain.  Do you have any idea how big this area is?

The area under consideration for oil production in the Coastal Plain is 1,500 to 2,000 acres!  That’s right.  It’s 2,000 acres.  If you refer to the illustarion above, I superimposed this area over the housing development in Texas where my wife and I bought some acreage.  The oil producing area that has been under scrutiny for over 30 years and been the focus of continual fighting between the environmentalists and conservatives in our country is less than half the size of the housing development I plan to retire in one day!!

This is such a great illustration of the lack of common sense among the leftist environmentalist movement.  This area in Alaska is downright negligible, but the Greens have painted it practically as the end of the world.

This country needs our own oil.  We badly need to break our dependence on foreign oil.  Even the left mouths words to this effect (insincerely).  The United States of America needs to wise up and quit being so suicidal over political correctness about the extremist environmentalists.  There is no end to their insanity.

In the state of Washington a decade ago, the green movement destroyed our lumber industry to save an owl.  And after the lumber industry was gutted and a few years went by, they discovered the spotted owl was still disappearing.  Turns out, the lumber industry was not the cause of their demise.  Oops.  But the lumber industry remains decimated in our state.  Thank you environmentalists.