Letter: Alaska suitable as oil source

Friday, March 23, 2001 | 10:04 a.m.

Charles Levendosky's recent column, "The battle for nature is being fought in Alaska," misses the mark so far he must be blind. I'm sure that he has never even been in the northern half of Alaska as have I and Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska. It is the most worthless, desolate country imaginable.

If we want to spring free of our dependence upon the whims of the Arab countries and OPEC, we must establish some domestic sources of oil, and what better place than Alaska? All the rest of his article is bleeding-heart liberal, environmental bunkum full of wrong assumptions and facts about the effects upon wildlife, especially in comparison with harm done thereto by drilling elsewhere in the United States.

Caribou are about as endangered as the house fly. They are plentiful in Canada, Scandinavia and Russia. Next to the common cow they are the dumbest beasts imaginable. As for the bird life and the polar bear, they can fly or swim around a few drilling sites -- Mr. Levendosky, prove that they can't.

LORRIN PETERSON, Pahrump