[wordup] Dilbert on ANWR

[Adam Shand]

From: mikem at alaska.net

Scott Adams (Dilbert) - statement drilling in Alaska

My Environmental Guilt
----------------------

Lately I've been getting flamed by people telling me I shouldn't put my
political opinions in the comic strip.  This surprised me because I didn't
know I had any political opinions.  In one recent comic I depicted an
Elbonian oil worker drilling through the back of a unicorn.  Apparently
something about that psychotic mess looked like an opinion about drilling
in the Alaskan Wildlife Preserve.

It's hard to have a righteous opinion on the environment when you're as
selfish and uninformed as I am.  On one hand, I'm a cat-loving vegetarian
who ought to care deeply about the caribou or koala bears or bats or
whatever they have in Alaska.  On the other hand, I live in California so
I'd be willing to squeeze schoolchildren to death if I thought some oil
would come out.  I might feel different if I planned to visit the Alaskan
Wildlife Preserve anytime soon.  But I don't know what I would do once I
got there, aside from praying that I froze to death before I got eaten by
a caribou, or a koala bear, or a bat.  I've seen pictures of the Alaskan
Wildlife Preserve and I can sum it up in just two words:  North Dakota.

Do we really need two North Dakotas?  I mean, we already have South Dakota
as an emergency spare.  I don't know whom to believe about the number of
critters that will get hurt by drilling in Alaska.  The oil companies want
me to believe that the drilling crews will be giving backrubs and
chocolate to the penguins, possibly taking them to formal dances.  The
environmentalists want me to believe that herds of caribou will be
squeezed into a single windowless igloo and forced to make sneakers out of
their own hide for ten cents an hour.  My confusion is compounded by the
fact that I ran over a squirrel yesterday while taking my car into the
shop.  I don't know how that's related, but it seemed worth mentioning.
Many questions remain.

Will more animals die during,

a) oil drilling in the Alaskan Wilderness Preserve, or
b) production of footwear for the protesters?

How much oil is in the ground up there in Alaska anyway?  In your heart
you know that somewhere there's a guy in a cubicle who had to come up with
an estimate for his boss.  He probably didn't have the budget to do the
kinds of tests he wanted to do so he just flew up there, stomped around in
a big furry outfit, stuck some poles in the ground, and proclaimed it to
contain five billion barrels of oil. He knew he'd be working someplace
else before anyone was the wiser. As the data worked its way up the chain
of management, every manager tacked on a few billion barrels to puff up
his own importance.  Now we're pretty sure that the entire planet Earth is
comprised of nothing but two inches of topsoil covering a huge ball of
oil.

To summarize my political opinions:

1.  I don't like unicorns
2.  There is no oil in schoolchildren
3.  Everyone on earth is a lying weasel