Re: IS DRILLING A SOLUTION?

On Sun, 30 Apr 2006 07:50:34 -0800, floyd@xxxxxxxxxx (Floyd L. Davidson) wrote:

Dave Head <rally2xs@xxxxxxx> wrote:
They note that there are much larger concerns than just simply
road avoidance in a simple form. They needed to study the
direct effects of infrastructure, but they also needed to study
how that indirectly affected caribou in other ways in order to
determine what the overall effect would be on population.
Selection of calving areas, selection of nutrients, insect
avoidance, and several other considerations come into it, and a
complex program to study the biology involved was necessary.

No, they don't need to do all that.

As if you have the foggiest notion of what needs to be done...

All they need to do is build the damn oil
wells and pipelines, and we will all watch the animals adapt, as animals do.

We have been watching caribou around oil infrastructure for over
30 years. You are correct that they will adapt. You are wrong
that all adaption is perfect.

Well, that is the bottom line right there, and is worth the end of the
discussion. "They will adapt." Fine. I'm not concerned whether it is perfect
or not. If there's 1/2 or 1/4 of the caribou afterward, then fine - I'm real
suspicious that it would be temporary, and the herd(s) would bounce back. But
even if they didn't, its not a good reason to stop progress on getting needed
energy reserves for the rest of the country. If the locals can't cope with
fewer caribou, then they just might have to enter the world economy and get a
job, maybe even in the oil industry. There's no guarantee that a certain group
is going to be able to continue just the way they always have, especially when
the other 300 or so million Americans need the energy. Them's the breaks, but
we all need every damned drop of oil on American soil that we can pump.

If the caribou were forecast to completely disappear from the North American
continent, it might be worth a delay to maybe figure out a way to preserve the
herd, either where it is, or move it somewhere else. But we need oil, and don't
need caribou.

Dave Head
.

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