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Tell Congress Not to Drill the Arctic Refuge
The oil industry and its friends in the Bush Administration are engaged in a misleading campaign to link today's high gas prices with a last-ditch effort to secure the right to drill in America's last pristine places. They are pushing Congress to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas drilling. We need your help today to stop them.
Drilling the Arctic Refuge will not lower gas prices, but it will cause permanent harm to a fragile Arctic ecosystem and the more than 250 species that depend on it. Tell your Representative and Senators not to sacrifice the Arctic Refuge to Big Oil. Add your comments to our letter below, then click on Send this Message.
To see additional information about how to send your own comments, click on "Tell me More," below.
| Sample Letter for Campaign |
Subject: Don't Drill the Arctic Refuge!
Dear [ Decision Maker ] ,
I am writing to urge you to stand firm and to Vote NO on any bill that would allow oil and gas drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. Like most Americans, I am very concerned about high energy prices. But I also know that drilling in our last pristine places - places we have pledged to protect for future generations of Americans - is not the answer to our country's energy needs.
Drilling in the Arctic Refuge will have no immediate effect on the prices I pay at the gas pump - only a few pennies per gallon, two decades down the road. Furthermore, since the U.S. only possesses three percent of the world's oil, but uses 25 percent of the world's oil supply, our domestic reserves of oil will always be out of balance with the tiny supply we could produce. This would be true if we drilled every square inch of every acre of protected public lands.
The Arctic Refuge is an incomparable ecosystem that would be permanently harmed by drilling. Now, it is a wildlife refuge, home to more than 250 species, including caribou, musk oxen, wolves, grizzly bears, the threatened polar bear, and tens of thousands of migratory birds that visit every state in the U.S. on their journey to and from Alaska. With drilling, this pristine landscape would be transformed into an industrial complex of airstrips, gravel pits, roads, drill pads, and pipelines. It is not worth the cost!
Please show your leadership, and reject the misleading and short-sighted answers suggested by the oil industry to solve our energy crisis. Reject calls to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Instead, please support policies that will move us toward the sustainable, 21st-century solutions of energy conservation and new energy technologies.
Sincerely,
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Campaign Launched:
June 27, 2008
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The oil companies and their supporters have joined with the Bush Administration in a misleading, multi-million-dollar campaign to push Congress to open up America's last pristine places to oil and gas drilling. They are doing this at a time when world energy prices are at an all-time high, and consumers are feeling the pain of these high prices. Just drill the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, they imply, and gas prices will go down. America's energy independence will be assured.
Nothing could be farther from the truth. Experts say drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would not lower gas prices in the near future, nor would it ever make an appreciable difference in world oil prices.
According to the U.S. government's own Energy Information Administration (EIA), if oil were discovered in commercial quantities in the Arctic Refuge, it would take at least 10 years for any of that oil to flow. At peak production, in 2030, gas prices would drop by only a few pennies per gallon. However, the pristine landscape of this world-renowned wildlife refuge would be transformed permanently into an industrial landscape of airstrips, gravel pits, roads, drill pads, and pipelines.
Today's high gasoline prices are the result of a host of economic conditions that have little to do with how much drilling is or is not taking place on federal lands. According to economic experts, these conditions include the weak dollar, prices driven up by energy speculators, and dramatically increased demand from China and India. Only the oil industry would benefit from drilling in the Arctic Refuge, and the industry already has sky-high profits. In 2007, those profits topped $155 billion. In the first quarter of 2008, the five largest oil companies recorded profits of $36.9 billion, even as American families struggled with prices at the pump.
Drilling would not only fail to help American families, but it would come at a terrible cost to the natural heritage we share. Once the Refuge is lost to drilling, it will be lost forever.
The energy "independence" for America promised by the oil companies is a myth. The United States possesses only three percent of the world's oil, yet the U.S. uses nearly 25 percent of world oil supplies. Even if we were to drill the Arctic Refuge and every other square inch of protected public lands, we would be unable to bring gas prices down because this fundamental imbalance between supply and demand would not change.
To solve the problem of high gas prices, we must move toward national policies that reward energy conservation and speed the development of renewable energy sources. In the past three years, conservation and new technologies have cut our projected need for oil through 2050 by 100 billion barrels. With a positive impact ten times greater than that of drilling in the Arctic Refuge, these approaches must continue to be our focus as a nation. The oil industry has a vested interest in continuing the energy policies of the 20th century. Congress needs to hear that we will never be able to drill our way to energy independence. Real leadership demands that we move aggressively to pursue 21st-century solutions.
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