New battle over Arctic oil plans

[YankeyMCC]

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The grey waters of the Arctic Ocean are the scene for a new battle over plans for a huge expansion in the drilling of oil and gas far beyond the Alaskan shore.

With the Arctic ice-cap melting far beyond average for the second year running - and with US petrol prices above $4 per gallon - there's growing pressure to exploit the reserves beneath the seabed.

The governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, in her speech accepting her nomination as Republican Party candidate for vice-president last week, said the country needed to produce more of its own oil and gas."
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"Oil ain't everything. What about the human beings that live up here, up and down the coastline? What about our way of life?.

"We may be few thousand in number, but this ocean has given us our food chain for us to live, to survive.

"And I'm not about to give that up just for the sake of the big oil giants to come out here and say they can do whatever they want to do."
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7609811.stm

Mr Brower comments really hit the mark of the heart of the morality of this decision. Yes he's a whaler and I'm sure we can debate that but his point remains valid. What we do to this world, how we use and live on it should always be in the support of the quality of life, of human sustainable life for generations, to take the risk of drilling for so temporary 'wealth' provided by oil (and what sort of wealth are we talking about really, more consumerism, well beyond what we needed and to the point of diminishing returns that this industrial revolution have provided to us.) is reckless to the point of being immoral.