The Conservation Report

Two myths republicans like to perpetuate regarding the environment debunked:

(1) Proponents for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) argue that the environmental footprint will only cover a small portion or the 2,000 acres of ANWR. True or False? FALSE! The infrastructure to get into and get out of those alleged 2,000 acres will threaten areas outside of the 2,000 acres. Furthermore, once Big Oil and republicans have those 2,000 acres, it’s a slippery slope from there for all of ANWR.  From Natural Resources Defense Council:

Close examination, however, reveals that the oil industry could not possibly develop the coastal plain in a compact, contiguous 2,000-acre area, and the way the amendment was worded would open up the entire refuge coastal plain to development, which would damage it permanently. Below is a look at the realities of the “2,000-acre footprint.”

Oil Infrastructure Would Spread Across the Coastal Plain

The relatively little economically recoverable oil in the refuge is not concentrated in one large reservoir within a 2,000-acre area but is spread across its 1.5-million-acre coastal plain in more than 30 small deposits, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.¹ To produce oil from this vast area, supporting infrastructure would have to stretch across the coastal plain. Networks of pipelines and roads obviously would fragment wildlife habitat. (For a map of what a 2,000-acre oil and gas development scenario on the coastal plain would look like, go to http://www.nrdc.org/land/wilderness/arcticmap_2000acres.pdf.)

The oil field industrial sprawl on the North Slope provides a relevant example. Including drill sites, airports and roads, and gravel mines, it has a footprint of 12,000 acres, but it actually spreads across an area of more than 640,000 acres, or 1,000 square miles. . . .

Proponents of drilling in the refuge also point to the 100-acre Alpine oil field west of Prudhoe Bay as the state-of-the-art model for developing the refuge. But the 2,000-acre “limitation” would allow 20 oil fields the size of Alpine scattered across the refuge’s coastal plain.

Even if the 2,000 acres were contiguous, such an area could cover a lot of ground. For example, the 12-lane-wide New Jersey Turnpike, which stretches more than 100 miles across the state, covers only 1,773 acres.

(2) The mining process to extract raw materials for electric, hybrid or PHEV car batteries is environmentally destructive; therefore, negating subsequent environmental benefits.  True or False? FALSE! From Grist:

The manufacturing process for a Prius is more energy intensive than the process for a non-hybrid of its size. However, according to research from Toyota, the Argonne National Laboratory, and the Rocky Mountain Institute, to name a few, the fuel savings you get in a hybrid more than make up for the initial eco-hit. (For a user-friendly rendition of all the science, check out the analysis in Slate).