CELEBRITY CORRUPTS: And absolute celebrity corrupts .... Not financially, or even ethically, just in making a person self-assuredly unaware of their own ignorance about a subject. Kevin Drum, a kind and delightful person, is now drenched in the DC mentality that assumes they understand everything about all. His corpus may be in California, but his brain is in the Beltway. I see no way to improve on doing just as Jesse at In Search of Telford, and quoting this entire post from alternative hippopotamus:

Compare and Contrast

Kevin Drum, Washington Monthly blogger:

Increasing production mainly means investing more in "frontier oil" and — in the U.S. — drilling in ANWR. As Jared Diamond points out in Collapse, it's perfectly possible to drill for oil in environmentally sensitive ways, and the fact is that Prudhoe Bay has been relatively trouble free for such a large-scale operation.

Rosemary Ahtuangaruak, mayor of the arctic village of Nuiqsut:

"Air pollution is visible over the North Slope in winter as a yellowish haze. Nitrogen oxide emissions from the oil fields are more than twice the total emitted in Washington, D.C. During winter there are many natural gas flares that occur, which caused me to have many busy nights on call responding to community members' complaints about respiratory illnesses. I remember when I began as a health aide there was only one asthmatic patient, and when I quit in 1999 there were 60 people who had to use respiratory medications. There are also increased numbers of thyroid disorders. For this village of more than 400 people, a 600 percent increase in respiratory patients should get some type of response. Our voices are not being heard."

Perhaps, Mayor Ahtuangaruak, the problem is that some people hear just what they want to believe.