|
WASHINGTON—Senator Joe Lieberman (D-CT) in a floor statement today led opposition to a provision in the Senate budget reconciliation bill that would open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in Alaska for oil drilling:
“Mr. President, once again we are here on the floor of the Senate debating opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling – a debate that began in 1985 and that has always been answered before now with a definitive “no” on this Senate floor.
“Today’s debate is on a motion to strike language permitting drilling that has been placed in the Budget Reconciliation Bill – a back-door maneuver to avoid true, unlimited debate on a decision whose consequences will echo for generations with the fracturing of a unique ecosystem.
“Mr. President, the language in the Budget Reconciliation Act fails its own two tests for success. It will not raise significant revenue for the Treasury and it will not lead us to energy security.
“This is both the wrong way to make this decision. And it’s clearly the wrong decision to make.
“I strongly urge my colleagues to vote for the motion to strike. If it this vote fails – and drilling is approved – then for that reason alone, I will vote against the Reconciliation bill.
“Mr. President, let me begin by explaining why it is wrong to even be debating drilling in the Arctic Refuge in the context of this Reconciliation bill.
“This past summer we debated and passed comprehensive energy legislation. Drilling in the Arctic Refuge was not even brought up in that thousand-page bill that we were told represented comprehensive energy policy.
“The fact that the Senate spent no time whatsoever debating drilling in the Arctic Refuge as part of energy legislation, but now deals with it in budget legislation, tells us everything we need to know about the motive of its proponents.
“They know they don’t have the votes needed to authorize drilling if this proposal came to us in a proper debate in the proper context and are using this device of the reconciliation bill to get around Senate rules.
“Is there anyone in this Chamber who believes that the purpose of this provision is to generate revenue for the budget? That in the context of a $2.6 trillion dollar budget, we must force the opening of a wildlife refuge to get $2 billion in new revenue over 10 years? Of course not!
“The real purpose of this provision is to frustrate the rules of the Senate – rules that protect the minority and the process of judicious deliberation – in order to jam through a provision through reconciliation that its proponents have been unable to pass for years.
“Section 401 – the Arctic Refuge Title of the reconciliation bill – flagrantly usurps the jurisdiction of the Environment and Public Works Committee (EPW).
EPW has sole jurisdiction over matters relating to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the management of the National Wildlife Refuge System -- as well as over the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA) and the National Wildlife Refuge Administration Act of 1966.
“For example, the title would virtually preclude the National Environmental Policy Act’s requirement that environmental impact assessments be performed before any leases can be granted.
“Also, Section 401 short circuits the all-important determination that the Fish and Wildlife Service is required by the National Wildlife Refuge Administration Act to make that drilling is compatible with the purposes of the refuge.
“Mr. President, I ask my colleagues to consider that if this procedural sleight of hand can be used to stymie open and unlimited debate on drilling in the Arctic Refuge, what other areas now closed for drilling will be opened up under the pretext of generating federal revenue?
“The Great Lakes? Our Coasts?
“And what will we get in return for putting this fragile Arctic wilderness area at risk? Will we achieve energy independence?
“No we certainly won’t.
“The Energy Information Agency tells us that peak production in the Arctic Refuge will be fewer than 1 million barrels per day. And that peak will not be reached until 2025 at the earliest.
“At that point, if we continue our current oil-consumption trends, the Refuge will be contributing no more than 4 percent of U.S. oil consumption.
“Meanwhile, 70 percent of our oil needs will be met by imports, with our national security and economy remaining every bit as vulnerable to the economic dynamics and geopolitics of the global oil market as it is today.
“Mr. President, if we were serious about facing up to the reality of our energy security challenge, we would be committing ourselves to changing the trend of ever-rising oil consumption.
“That is why I will shortly be introducing – with colleagues from both sides of the aisle – legislation that will lower our national dependence on oil by reinventing our transportation system from the refinery to the tailpipe by using hybrid vehicles and homegrown biofuels and electricity to power our vehicles.
Mr. President, destroying perhaps one of the greatest wilderness areas in the United States under the twin but barren banners of energy security and federal revenue is unacceptable when you consider what is at stake.
“On February 14 of this year, 1,000 leading U.S. and Canadian scientists called on President Bush to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from oil drilling and to – I quote – ‘support permanent protection of the coastal plain's significant wildlife and wilderness values.’
“The signers categorically rejected the notion that the impacts of drilling could be confined to a limited footprint, as pro-drilling forces claim.
The effects of oil wells, pipelines, roads, airports, housing, processing plants, gravel mines, air pollution, industrial noise, seismic exploration and exploratory drilling would radiate across the entire coastal plain of the Arctic Refuge.
“Given those inevitable environmental intrusions, is it any wonder, then, that the authors of this measure included provisions that would stymie the environmental protections that would normally apply under the National Environmental Policy Act and the National Wildlife Administration Act? And because they have all but eliminated these protections, drilling will go forward with virtually none of the environmental protections that the public expects to be in place for such activity on other federal lands.
“It just makes no sense to destroy the Arctic Refuge for oil that won't lower prices to our consumers or give us true energy security.
Mr. President, the mark of greatness in a generation lies not just in what it builds for itself, but also in what it preserves for the generations to come.
Drilling in the Arctic for some short-term convenience in our time, will shortchange the legacy we should be building for the time of our children.
“I urge my colleagues to vote to adopt the Motion to Strike.”
Audio of this statement is available here.
-30-
|
