Letters

0 Comments | Gazette, The (Colorado Springs), Jul 23, 2008

ENERGY CRISIS

Yes, Ms. Wallace, we do need to drill for oil

In the article, "We don't need more oil exploration and drilling" (letters, July 19) Sheilla Wallace quotes from the U.S. News, May 23, 2008 article, the U.S. Energy Information Administration concluded that new oil from ANWR would lower the price of oil by no more than $1.44 per barrel and the largest impacts would be nearly 20 years from now. This illogical assessment is alarming. To state that a solution is long-term, and therefore we should not pursue it, will not solve our dependence on foreign oil. If we would have acted 20 years ago, we wouldn't be in the situation we're in today.

The prediction by this agency within the Department of Energy uses a static model of increased global supply from the additional oil from ANWR against predicted demands. It does not consider the dynamic factors of the global market and predict how that market is going to react when the United States, a consumer of almost 25 percent of the world market, decides to pursue energy independence. OPEC and other oil producing countries would be concerned and the market would react immediately to deter this initiative.

Leases for almost 70 million acres, much offshore, does not translate into oil production. Companies must be allowed to drill where the oil is located. Also, there's a difference between leases and having permits allowing for drilling. Legislation passed by the U.S. Congress prevents off-shore drilling along the coasts and in ANWR - there has been a moratorium for off-shore drilling since 1969 (for the U.S. not China). An appropriate analogy for the argument that oil companies have enough leases is the following - if you provide someone a tract of land in the desert and direct them to grow corn, that's obviously not going to be successful because of the environment. Political posturing by idealogues that states farmers have leases in the desert to grow corn, will not increase the food supply.

Average Americans that deal with the daily "trial and tribulations" of making ends meet - feed family, home mortgages, child care, automobiles, gas and increasing taxes, will not be tolerant of idealogues like Sheila Wallace, who continue the same old tired rhetoric that has led us to our failed national energy policy. This nation needs to pursue all paths to energy independence - drill for oil, alternative and renewable fuels, energy efficiency and conservation.

Let's not forsake the long-term solution (increased production), in conjunction with other energy initiatives, that will lead this nation to energy independence.

Michael E. Terry

Colorado Springs

IRVING HOWBERT SCHOOL

Those tribes Irving Howbert abused weren't so peaceful

Thomas Hatch asked in his letter to the editor why a westside elementary school is named after Irving Howbert ("Why is school named after Howbert?" letters, July 18). I will tell your readers, even though I don't think Hatch wants an honest answer. For in his shameless promotion of his own book in your column he reveals his extreme prejudice against the white settlers in Colorado Territory who had to take up arms in 1864 to protect their families and property against marauding Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians.

Those tribes had not only massacred the entire Hungate family, sealed off Denver from wagon traffic, killed scores of innocent settlers, but took their scalps back to their Sand Creek encampment which were readily discovered in the wake of the Sand Creek Battle.

Those 'peaceful' tribes also captured and enslaved white women and children. Black Kettle, Hatch's hero, was one of the worst offenders. Maybe he should study Greg and Susan Michno's voluminous 2007 study 'A Fate Worse Than Death' that details what those tribes did to women and children they kidnapped.

Even after the Sand Creek battle that General Curtis ordered in order to deter those tribes from more attacks, the Arapaho continued their depredations. They shot and killed the two young Robbins boys right here on Shooks Run, and scalped young Colorado City's Charles Everhart.

Irving Howbert was just one low-ranking 18-year-old corporal in the Third Colorado Cavalry. Twenty five of his fellow soldiers were 25 killed and 51 wounded fighting those supposedly 'defenseless' Indians. Howbert proved to be an outstanding and very observant young man, who wrote down his eyewitness account of what happened. He also wrote what had happened before and after Sand Creek, which Hatch utterly ignores.

Irving Howbert became second only to General Palmer as the leading citizen of Colorado Springs. He was elected locally four times to public office even by those who knew the Sand Creek story well, living far closer in time to it than Hatch does.

Hatch's charge of 'racism' is absurd. For the same 18 Colorado City men, including Howbert, whom Hatch calls ' murderous' at Sand Creek, welcomed bands of Ute Indians larger than the entire population of Colorado City when they encamped for months right on Fountain Creek next to Colorado City without incident in both 1865 and 1867.