Energy Policy and ANWR Oil

With the newfound Republican majority in the Senate, President Bush's new energy policy will focus on a contentious issue: drilling oil in Alaska's ANWR wildlife reserve. The theory: there's 11 billion barrels of oil out in there. We can then extract the oil. The realistic argument: There's lots and lots of wildlife that has already been disturbed by previous drilling. Plus, we'd need to build a new pipeline for the oil anyway. But the pipelines aren't an issue. There's support for $20 billion for that. For $20 billion, the US could build two ITER's for itself! I suppose the prospect of environmentally safe fusion power isn't worth funding on a reasonable level. After all, fusion would last humanity the rest of its existence, while oil can last us (depending on who you ask) 50-150 years.