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An Argument Against Drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve

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An Argument Against Drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve
An Argument against Drilling in the Alaskan National Wildlife Reserve
By: James Andrew Whitten

Government Economics
Heath Vincent
March 5, 2013

America’s rank as the world’s leading superpower gives the nation unsurpassed clout throughout the rest of the world, but as the old saying goes “With great power comes great responsibility.” Many other nations not only rely on America’s economy for their own country’s survival, but they also look up to America with a hopeful sense for the future. The founding fathers of this great nation had excellent insight into the authority that America would one day possess, and thus they attempted to set many precedents that would lead the way for the nations that would choose to follow America’s example. Still today, every move that the American nation makes is carefully scrutinized by the other nations of the world. So, it is crucial that the United States ensure that as it moves forward, it does so with a noble and future oriented perception of its goals. Thus, drilling for oil in the Alaskan National Wildlife Reserve would be a colossal mistake for the United States, because drilling would be detrimental to the pristine indigenous environment, it would have little or no beneficial impact on the American or Global economy, and would poorly exemplify the ambitions that America should have. For the past century, the global dependency on oil has progressively increased each and every year. Now, the world’s need for a steady oil supply is at an all-time high, but oil supplies are slowly dwindling day by day. Oil prices have sky rocketed, the environment has been irreversibly damaged, and it is evident that this rate of oil consumption is completely unsustainable. So should America not be avidly searching for new sustainable alternatives to oil, rather than attempting to destroy land set aside for the very purpose of protecting it against such damaging procedures as oil drilling? The Alaskan National Wildlife Reserve

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