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I agree with the Onion that if we follow the "oil as addiction" metaphor then ANWR is the point at which we pawn our wedding ring for a weekend in Vegas. The fact is that 95% of Alaska's Northern coast is already available for oil drilling. ANWR will not impact in any substancial way our unsustainable dependance on oil as fuel source.
Alaskans' support for drilling in ANWR has been bought with yearly checks from the government. Although I'd like to see what would happen if those checks were printed side-by-side with the profits oil executives are making off of the people's natural resources.
The argument that we need to drill in ANWR in order to sustain our more rugged gas-guzzling vehicles is as specious as Kurant's "I've killed animals there for years..." argument. Exceptions in our fuel-economy laws were made for utility vehicles, but since then we've seen them used primarily as passenger cars. To future generations our attachment to SUVs and other low-efficiency vehicles will seem as ludicrous as the ancient Maya cutting down their forests in order to re-plaster their buildings every year.
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