Protecting America's Wild Places
Rushing to drill the last drop of oil and gas from our public lands, national monuments and forests threatens our last-remaining special places and moves us backward, not forward, towards a clean energy future. Already, plans to drill more than 100,000 new wells are moving forward, threatening to overrun special places in the West with a spider web of roads, pipelines, well pads and transmission lines. Western communities will be left to deal with the effects of this rampant drilling, which threatens drinking water sources and impinges on private property rights.

However, the administration and industry allies in Congress are working to open up the few special places that remain closed to drilling and to unravel already limited environmental safeguards that protect wildlife, such as the grizzly bear, and keep drinking water sources clean. Instead we should protect our Western lands. That means saying no to drilling in our special places and enacting common sense provisions to protect wildlife and scarce water supplies where drilling is allowed.

Energy and Land Fact Sheets:

#1: Oppose Amendments to Roll Back Protections for Fish and Wildlife, Water and Fragile Sites on America’s Public Lands
#2: Oppose Amendments to Give Authority Over America’s Public Lands to Some State Commissions
#3: Oppose Amendments to Open Up Protected Areas on Public Lands to Oil and Gas Drilling
#4: Oppose Amendments to Exempt the Oil and Gas Industry Practice of Hydraulic Fracturing from the Safe Drinking Water Act
#5: Oppose Amendments to Erode Important Environmental Protections for our Air, Water and Lands
#6: Oppose Amendments to Strip National Forests and Public Lands of Environmental Safeguards

• Billion Dollar Tax Credit for Coalbed Methane (Section 29)

Protecting The Arctic Refuge
Drilling in sensitive areas such as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would do virtually nothing to reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil. In contrast, increasing fuel economy standards would have far-reaching benefits for our energy security.

• The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that there are only six months worth of economically recoverable oil in the Arctic Refuge, which would not be available for at least ten years.
• The Arctic Refuge would reduce U.S. oil imports by only two percent—from 64 percent to 62 percent of total oil consumption in 2020.
• By 2017, the cumulative oil savings of a 35 mpg fuel economy standard would be greater than the total projected yield from the Arctic Refuge over its 50-year lifetime.

U.S. Oil Imports and Options for Decreasing Dependence (millions of barrels of oil per day)

• Find out more at SaveTheArctic.com.