Who is stopping the drilling at ANWR?

-RKO- is dead wrong.

In general, the right sees an end to high oil prices in drilling more domestic land, thus increasing supply to satisfy demand. In general, the left sees an end to high oil prices in alternatives and not oil, thus decreasing the demand side of oil.

They're both right. We need both.

And one more thing; the "they already have leases on government land that they aren't drilling" argument is not a valid one. The whole reason they have so many leases is exploration. Most of the land that is leased to them already can't pull a profit for them if they were to be drilled. It doesn't take an idiot to realize that oil is a business and businesses aren't in the game to lose money. The amount of oil that they could get out of the ground wouldn't even be enough to cover the cost to actually extract it from the ground, much less refine it. It would be a waste of their time when they could be drilling proven resource (such as off the coast or n ANWR), thus driving prices up even more.

Alternatives are definitely part of the long-term solution. Anyone who says otherwise is a bit too optimistic about oil production, but saying that we shouldn't be drilling for a short term solution until the alternatives are viable REPLACEMENTS is just plain asinine.

If president Clinton had let the oil companies drill ANWR ten years ago we'd be reaping the benefits TODAY. But people back then said "Oh, well that's not a short term solution. It'll take years to get the oil out of there! NOT WORTH IT.", and the opponents to drilling domestically today are saying the exact same thing.

If people on both sides would their damn brains things would be a lot better for us.

The Democrats. We could of already had the oil running if Pres. Clinton didn't veto the bill (1995?) that was already passed by Congress to drill.

What oil company has said anything about drilling there? And why would they? They are enjoying the record profits created by the supposed shortage. Why lose money by supplying more?

Who's stopping the drilling?

They are. Those guys (the ones over there).

We need Sarah Palin to bust outta can of Whoop@§§

They have yet to drill in the rest of Alaska where they have leases. We can talk about it after they actually drill where they have leases.

The left wing liberal loonies in the Democrat party and their cash-contributing, tree-hugging allies have stopped all new drilling.

I believe you're focusing on the wrong issue.

More domestic OIL exploration and drilling is not the solution to America's energy solutions. Alternative energy is the wave of the future.

Regardless of how much OIL might be available (or might not be available) it only exacerbates the problem: eventually we will suck all of the OIL from the Earth.

Drilling for OIL in one of the Earth's few remaining pristine regions might not even offer American motorists any relief from higher gasoline prices. China now sells more new cars per capita than the U.S.A. India's TaTa Motors just bought Ford's Jaguar and Land Rover properties. That means China and India are fast becoming greater users of OIL than the United States. That means if U.S. OIL companies start drilling in ANWR, they might be inclined to sell all that OIL to the highest bidders, mainly India and China!

In these past 150 years of man's 'industrial revolution', we have ignored one important fact of life: we cannot continue to drain this planet of all its natural resources just for the sake of our own profit, comfort or convenience.

Whether you're Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, agnostic or atheist, you must have enough intelligence to understand that ALL plant and animal species were put on this Earth for a purpose. It would be brainlessly obtuse for man to willfully destroy all of Earth's other creatures just to satisfy his own selfish needs or wants.

The wild elephant; tsetse fly; Venus fly trap; oceans; polar ice caps; wheat fields; human beings; daffodils; wetlands; rare poisonous Amazonian frog; Bengal tiger; remote Eskimo tribes; mountain gorilla; rain forests; swamps; grasslands; 'uncivilized' tribal villagers in dense Brazilian jungles; honey bee; horse shoe crab*; mangrove forests; oceans; mountains; redwood tree; krill; coral reef; kitten; lilac bush and every other plant and animal species on this planet deserve to be here as much as man does.

If "God" or an "intelligent designer" or "Mother Nature" didn't want them here, (s)he wouldn't have put them here in the first place.

We've been incredibly poor stewards of the Earth, squandering its resources, destroying its beauty and bounty, and allowing it to slowly die from our man-made air pollution, oil spills, poisoned waterways, chemically-induced crops, smoke-belching factories, vehicle emissions and asphalted highways.

Four hundred years ago, when Europeans first landed on these shores, the native American Indians regarded the land as sacred, and belonging to everybody. If they shot a buffalo, it was used for the good of the community, and none of it was wasted. The 'new' Americans shot millions of buffalo just for the sheer sport of it, and allowed their carcasses to rot on the plentiful great plains.

and you can say, "Well, WE don't do that!" but we do: we refuse to REuse, REduce or REcycle. We live in squalor created by our toxic waste dumps and leaking landfills. We drive gas-guzzling SUVs and Hummers. We buy all kinds of [petroleum-based] plastic junk that we don't need from WalMart for 'low prices -everyday' - junk that will eventually end up in a yard sale. We build larger homes than we need, asphalt over rich soil so we can park in shopping malls or drive on superhighways. Americans throw away more food than some countries have food supplies. We waste. We squander. We plunder, rape, and pillage the planet of its plenty. We refuse to conserve anything. We just want more and more and more.

Eventually there will be no "more". And our grandchildren and great-grandchildren will pay dearly for our gluttony.

Extracting more OIL from pure, untouched regions of the planet is not the answer. Conservation, frugality, reduction and a moral consciousness is the answers we must provide if we expect to allow our descendants to inherit anything close to the Earth we now know. -RKO- 06/30/08

democrats, left leaning republicans and tree huggers!