WHAT IS THE ISSUE?

Since the reelection of President Bush, a GOP takeover in Congress, and the defeat of Democratic majority leader Tom Daschle, drilling in ANWR’S 1.5 million acre coastal plain, is now ever more a reality. For years, extreme environmental groups backed by liberal lobbyists in Washington, have blocked all legislation to open the coastal plain. All compromises have been abandoned to follow out dated plays, in the post-hippie Democratic playbook, that will soon mark the end of there era. In the blessed month of my birth, the American people, spoke through the voice of a pen, and elected a conservative majority to two of the three branches of our government. It is time that we stop bowing down to the likes of a tree and remember who and what our country was founded on.

The Republican Party has the burden of carrying this beacon and has had a reputation of not respecting the environment. This is quite a popular statement and when truly examined what one will find is that the Republican Party does, in every sense, respect the environment, but what they do not do, so gracefully, is worship the environment like the left fringe of the Democratic Party. Everything in life is a trade off for something else, and what we need to ask ourselves is, "what will benefit our country more?" I have never met a person that has said, “I want to destroy the environment.” If the American people can answer the question of what will benefit our country more, I think we can lay this issue to rest.

The issue is clearly an environmental concern over the protection and conservation of the land. I hope, that this being the only concern for the past 40 years, shows that there is no argument over the size and worth of the natural energy in ARWR's coastal plain. No one has ever said that drilling in Alaska will end the worlds hunger for oil. There has never been a politician who has exclaimed that ANWR will bring independence to America's foreign energy crisis. The time has come for rational people to understand the benefits of utilizing the benefits of what sits on American soil. ANWR is an issue that can be the begriming of an new era that will push forward the development of a fair and peaceful world.

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