George Will hits pay dirt on ANWR!

Just as I heard for the umpteenth time that a vote approving drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge was being held up by procedural matters [20 House Republicans are holding it up on this particular occasion], the thought occurred to me that energy may not be the largest problem facing America today.

The problem may be a failing system of government, and George Will gets close to the problem of just what is really behind the insane antics of Senators Kerry, Boxer, and other creatures of the far left fringe of the Democratic Party. What these dishonest ideologues are so frantically opposed to is really not a big deal, as Will marshals out facts to counter the passionate emotionalism of ANWR’s opponents.

His philosophical point is that, behind the bucolic and pristine “rugged individualist” theatrics that environmentalists trot out on ANWR lies a more radical purposeful agenda. But Will says it best:

But for many opponents of drilling in the refuge, the debate is only secondarily about energy and the environment. Rather, it is a disguised debate about elemental political matters.
For some people, environmentalism is collectivism in drag. Such people use environmental causes and rhetoric not to change the political climate for the purpose of environmental improvement. Rather, for them, changing the society's politics is the end, and environmental policies are mere means to that end.
The unending argument in political philosophy concerns constantly adjusting society's balance between freedom and equality. The primary goal of collectivism -- of socialism in Europe and contemporary liberalism in America -- is to enlarge governmental supervision of individuals' lives. This is done in the name of equality.
People are to be conscripted into one large cohort, everyone equal (although not equal in status or power to the governing class) in their status as wards of a self-aggrandizing government. Government says the constant enlargement of its supervising power is necessary for the equitable or efficient allocation of scarce resources.
Therefore, one of the collectivists' tactics is to produce scarcities, particularly of what makes modern society modern -- the energy requisite for social dynamism and individual autonomy. Hence collectivists use environmentalism to advance a collectivizing energy policy. Focusing on one energy source at a time, they stress the environmental hazards of finding, developing, transporting, manufacturing or using oil, natural gas, coal or nuclear power.

Okay, maybe Ol’Philosopher George may be pushing it a bit on “producing scarcities,” but the wacky dialectic of the Left as pushed by frauds like Kerry certainly gets close to entirely counterintuitive. The entire Left Coast lives in an alternate universe on energy sourcing, and the mantra of “pristine ANWR” certainly fits into their total denial of reality. Kerry's slice of the East Coast is hardly saner.

Like Roe vs. Wade, ANWR has become a symbol, the most powerful motivator to the process-obsessed Leftist mind. The fact that Roe vs. Wade is bad law, as the current Economist points out, is misted over by “penumbras emanating” from what the Founding Fathers intended. ANWR is even more insane than Justice Douglas’ infamous jabberwocky.

But doctrine to the hysteric “impassioned” shadow-Presidium keeps their eyes on the skies. Practical, down-to-earth, day-to-day concerns are beneath these mystics’ attention, as their knowledge is derived as some sort of infused contemplation from a Cartesian source based on mind-over-matter symbolism. Or whatever.

Better let George finish up,

ANWR has become sacramental for environmentalists who speak about it the way Wordsworth wrote about the Lake Country.
Few opponents of energy development in what they call "pristine" ANWR have visited it. Those who have and who think it is "pristine" must have visited during the 56 days a year when it is without sunlight. They missed the roads, stores, houses, military installations, airstrip and school. They did not miss seeing the trees in area 1002. There are no trees.
Opponents worry that the caribou will be disconsolate about, and their reproduction disrupted by, this intrusion by man. The same was said 30 years ago by opponents of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, which brings heated oil south from Prudhoe Bay. Since the oil began flowing, the caribou have increased from 5,000 to 31,000. Perhaps the pipeline's heat makes them amorous.
Ice roads and helicopter pads, which will melt each spring, will minimize man's footprint, which will be on a 2,000-acre plot about one-fifth the size of Dulles Airport. Nevertheless, opponents say the environmental cost is too high for what the ineffable John Kerry calls "a few drops of oil." Some drops. The estimated 10.4 billion barrels of recoverable oil -- such estimates frequently underestimate actual yields -- could supply all the oil needs of Kerry's Massachusetts for 75 years.

Now this is a practical response to a real problem.