In a frankly political move to help Republicans who may find it useful to tally a vote for Arctic drilling amid concern back home over high gas prices, HR 5429 will be on the floor this week for a straight up or down vote on drilling in the Arctic Refuge.
Arctic Shell Game Given the track record of the House, we expect to lose this vote — as we have in the past. The House leadership is playing a shell game because prospects for getting a similar proposal through the Senate have failed countless times — House proponents know that this bill is going nowhere but hope to make political hay from it. However, it's very important that we not lose ground in the House.
Please take a moment to let your House member know, again, that a vote for drilling in the Arctic Refuge — however symbolic — is a vote for big oil, has-been thinking and lack of leadership in our current energy situation. Please send an email registering your impatience with this pointless attack on the Arctic Refuge.
Penny in TwentyAs both the House and the Senate consider their energy options, they need to understand one thing: opening the Refuge is never an option.
In reality, drilling in the Arctic Refuge won't provide relief at the pump. According to government experts at the Energy Information Administration, oil from the Refuge would reduce gas prices by only a penny per gallon -- and that wouldn’t happen until 2025. In fact, the first drop of Arctic oil, if there is any, wouldn't even come online for seven to ten years.
What drilling would do is ruin one of America’s greatest sanctuaries for wildlife.
Please contact your House Member. We cannot be complacent with this vote. A sign of weakeness will be quickly exploited by the pro-drillers
Message: We can't drill our way out of dependence on oil. We need real solutions to our energy needs. Opening the Arctic Refuge is not an answer. Any bill that drills in the Arctic Refuge is unsupportable.
More Ammunition• In 2000, when gas prices were much lower, the Environmental Protection Agency estimated that just a 3 mile-per-gallon improvement in mileage would save Americans $25 billion per year at the pump -- $230 a year for every American household.
• Better gas mileage would also conserve one million barrels of oil per day -- more than would ever come from the Refuge.
• More efficient cars would reduce carbon emissions by 140 metric tons annually, helping to reduce global warming.
Why Should the Arctic Refuge be Protected?The Arctic Refuge will become an industrialized oil production complex. The coastal plain of the refuge contains unique bird habitat and is critical to the survival of the Porcupine caribou herd. While proponents of opening the Refuge to drilling argue that only 2,000 acres of the Refuge’s “1002 Area” would be affected, the industrial oil complex would require a sprawling matrix of roads, pipelines, drilling pads, processing plants, gravel mines, and airports.
Oil production will result in pollution. In some cases, the oil fields adjacent to the refuge average more than one toxic spill a day.
Just a few months, on March 2, an oil operator discovered signs of an oil spill at a caribou crossing on the snow-covered tundra of Alaska’s North Slope. Clean-up crews have already vacuumed up more than 50,000 gallons of crude oil and melted snow off the delicate tundra, but at least one industry expert has received reports from the site that as much as 798,000 gallons could be unaccounted for, possibly making this the largest crude oil spill in the history of the North Slope, and second in Alaska only to the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill. Spills cause long-term damage to bird populations and habitat.
Please help us turn back this latest attack on America’s wildest refuge. Tell Congress to offer real solutions to our energy needs, not band aid solutions and not Arctic Refuge destruction.
Audubon Public Policy Division
1150 Connecticut Avenue, NW
Suite 600
Washington, DC 20036
1-800-659-2622
[email protected]
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