Arctic Power: Grab readers' attention with trite emotional platitudes.
Palin: Â I am dismayed ... prohibit forever ... most promising unexplored petroleum province (Wait, that one's just not true, you betcha. Oh well, I'll go with it anyway).
Arctic Power: Freak readers out with appeals to fear.
Palin: (Okay, I can do fear.) Lurking high gas prices ... instability in the Middle East ... shifting world power. (Oooo, I scared myself!).
Arctic Power: Finally, offer drilling as the answer to everything.
Palin: (I love this part!) Jobs ... stimulus ... energy supply ... independence ... leadership .... (Plus anything else I can think of. Dang I'm good!)
Unfortunately, what Gov. Palin failed to include was facts. Her op-ed was an endless litany of unsubstantiated assertions.
Fact: The latest figures from the federal government's Energy Information Administration estimate that Arctic Refuge production would peak in 2027 at 780,000 barrels a day. Currently the U.S. alone consumes 21 million barrels per day. Obviously, that amount of oil will do little to increase our supply or lower our gas prices.
Meanwhile, in the past three years, conservation and alternative technologies (you know, those things Palin talked about in her recent state of the state speech) have reduced our nation's projected need for imported oil by 113 billion barrels over the next 40 years. So which path leads to true energy independence?
Fact: Recent Department of Transportation figures show that last year Americans chose to drive 102 billion fewer miles than they did in 2007, saving hundreds of millions of barrels of oil-far more than could be produced each year from the Arctic Refuge.
Fact: Oil prices are set on a global oil market, and Arctic Refuge oil production, even at peak, would add, at most, 1 percent to total production, according to a 2008 Energy Information Administration report. Historically, such small increases in U.S. production have had little, if any, impact on world oil prices.
The EIA itself has said that OPEC would immediately kill any "minimal impact" of Arctic Refuge oil on the global market by merely turning down the spigot in Saudi Arabia or elsewhere for a few minutes.
Fact: The Arctic Refuge is one of the last true wilderness areas left in the United States. The coastal plain of the refuge contains valuable habitat for 250 species of wildlife - including caribou, polar bears, grizzly bears and migrating birds.
The Porcupine Caribou Herd, which depends on the coastal plain of the Arctic Refuge for calving and nursery of its offspring, has sustained the people of the Gwich'in Nation for over 20,000 years. Protecting the Arctic Refuge is a human rights issue for the Gwich'in people.
Fact: Gov. Palin likes to say that any drilling in the refuge will be limited to a 2,000 acre footprint. The federal government has said that the oil believed to be found in the refuge is scattered across the 1.5 million acre coastal plain. The U.S. Geological Service has estimated that 800 wells would be required to tap it.
Eight hundred wells, plus roads, plus airports, plus gravel mines, plus pipelines, plus whatever other infrastructure is required (remember the coastal plain is currently untouched by human hand), does not equal 2,000 acres. Just ask the editorial board of the Fairbanks Daily News Miner.
Fact: The Arctic Refuge belongs to all of us. It is one of the last untouched, pristine places left in America.
When my 2-year-old son grows up, when Gov. Palin's newborn grandson grows up, I hope both of them will be able to experience the peace that comes when there is nothing but sky around you, when you realize that you are but a small iteration in the majesty of nature, God's creation, the wild world.
That's a peace I carry with me wherever I go. It is a peace that I'd rather not live without. It is a peace that is found in too few places - places like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. A place that is too special to destroy for a small amount of oil.