The Bush administration is going to strive to reduce our reliance on foreign sources of power and emphasize generation of power right here at home. Cheney contends that viable alternative energy sources are years down the road and not something we can count on. Of the three fossil fuels, the administration's plan for coal sounds promising since they want to spend more on research into developing clean-coal technologies. Good news for the coal producing states like Kentucky and West Virginia. With regard to oil and natural gas, the task force may recommend opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to exploration.
Environmentalists are concerned.
It's now 12 years since that catastrophic oil spill off the Alaskan coast and they are still cleaning up. Some animal and plant species will never recover though some have recovered. Family fishing enterprises went under never to be seen again and the environmental devastation was and is massive. A more recent, and equally troubling example, is the January 2001 oil spill off the Galapagos Islands where Charles Darwin developed the theory of evolution. These islands contain species of animals that exist nowhere else in the world and many that have not yet even been documented.