CARTOON: Missed mark by a mile

Last Friday’s political cartoon by M. Wuerker was one of the most disingenuous pieces of political claptrap I have ever seen. Obviously the cartoonist has never been to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), or he would not have drawn that cartoon the way he did. He has obviously been influenced by the eco-left and their beautiful photographs of what they purport to be the ANWR where the proposed drilling site is.

It is actually a very inhospitable place with billions of mosquitos, boot sucking mud over frozen permafrost without a tree in sight. The refuge is 19.28 million acres in size. And while the coastal area that is included in the oil lease is 1.5 million acres, the actual drilling activity site is 3.3 square miles, or about 2,000 acres. Which if my calculator is working, is .001 percent of the area. That is one, one thousandth of a percent of the area. To put it in a perspective you may be able to picture better, the ANWR is larger than the combined states of Rhode Island, Delaware, Connecticut, New Jersey and New Hampshire with enough left over for Kootenai County to rattle around in with room to spare. The actual proposed drilling area is equal to the area from Government Way to 15th Street and Sherman Avenue to Kathleen Avenue. Isn’t it about time we continued on the path of developing our own resources, instead of paying billions of dollars to people who don’t like us and want to kill us?

KENT SETTY

Coeur d’Alene