Even under the most optimistic estimates of recoverable oil from the Arctic refuge, it could only add 0.4 percent to world oil reserves, a drop in the bucket. Simple energy conservation measures could save much more oil than the refuge could ever produce. For example, increasing fuel efficiency standards to 30 mpg would, by the year 2020, save twice as much energy as the government believes might be recovered from the coastal plain. According to the World Watch Institute, every year as much energy leaks through American windows as moves through the Trans-Alaska pipeline. Improving the energy efficiency in buildings could decrease national energy use by one-thi rd by 2010, saving in a single year twice the probable 3.2 bbls of the Arctic Refuge.
Energy conservation creates more jobs than drilling for oil in the refuge.
Cost-effective and technically feasible methods of reducing the nation's energy use could yield over a quarter million jobs in a few years, compared with 15,000 from drilling. By 2010, the energy efficiency industry could produce 1.3 million jobs. The oil industry's national security arguments for opening the coastal plain cannot be taken seriously. It is illogical to argue that the United States needs the coastal plain's oil while the state of Alaska and industry concurrently lobby for permission to sell the oil overseas. The two positions are contradictory.