Remember that USGS study out last week about how ANWR drilling would have significant negative impacts on caribou herds and other wildlife?
Predictably, the Bush Administration reacted with a tizzy. And so nobody was surprised when the USGS rushed out a follow-up report only a week later, indicating, “Nope, no dangers to caribou here.“
But drilling opponents derided the latest review as a desperate act of political intervention by Norton and her aides. Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) said he found it “hard to believe” that a seven-day review could provide better information than a report surveying the scientific literature about Arctic wildlife from the past 12 years.
“That’s a predictable criticism that simply ignores the facts,” said Interior Department spokesman Eric Ruff. “This new information demonstrates once again that we can protect wildlife and produce energy in an environmentally responsible way.”
There’s more to the story than this, however. Reading the article, there may actually be some grounds for criticizing the original USGS report, and the sound bites extracted from it. The original report looked at multiple ANWR drilling scenarios, and found significant adverse affects only in the full development scenario, something that is not currently being proposed by anyone (though it is likely fair to bring up the slippery slope of scope creep once drilling is established).
And, by the same token, some environmentalists are now willing to criticize the initial report for only looking at calving areas, not area where yearlings spend time.
To climb up onto a high horse here (which I can do, since I was more than willing to run with those initial sound bites), nobody is particularly covered with glory here.
- Environmentalists and opponents of the Bush Adminstration’s energy and environmental policy were more than willing to distort the initial report as badly or worse than movie studios are willing to extract the two or three positive words about a movie from even the most critical critic’s review. And they were willing to, at least initially, overlook gaps in the models being used.
- The Bushies reacted here in such a predictably knee-jerk reaction that even if their read on the USGS report (initial and follow-up) is a correct one, they come across as slash-n-burn ideologues who would just as soon resolve the whole problem by hunting down the caribou herds from helicopters and clean ’em out of the place.
When folks can only expect a knee-jerk reaction out of you, they will tend to discount what you have to say. Both sides in this debate run that risk, which is a shame, because there are some big issues at stake.