I really thought I would come back from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge with some pretty good pictures of, well, wildlife. To hear the environmentalists talk about it, ANWR is a pristine landscape filled with mountains, trees, and creatures huddled together for safety on their tiny tiny refuge. Imagine how stunned I was to discover, upon landing, that I was in a very different place. “Surface of the moon” comes to mind.

What I found was a vast coastal flat almost the size of my home state of Tennessee. This refuge was taken from the local population by the Federal Government in the 60s. At the time, residents were promised a 2,000 acre plot they could develop for energy purposes. Those 2,000 acres- 10% of the size of a suburb of Nashville – are the issue at hand.

We are talking about an area with so much potential energy that residents actually cut out slabs of oil rich sand for use in heating their homes. I suppose they could cut down trees if they wanted to, but the nearest forest is 100 miles away.

Bottom line: the environmentalists concocted a misinformation campaign about this landscape and perpetuated a fundamentally unfair policy. It is unfair to the people who live in Northern Alaska and it is unfair to an American economy in desperate need of energy solutions.

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Last week, I blogged on this site about how the earth-first-istas and their limousine liberal allies in the Democrat party are hurting the true environmentalists; those whose livelihood depends on the land itself. I argued that these pseudo-environmentalists are happy to drive up the cost of energy while they arrogantly believe that Americans can simply “drive less and pay more” but they have offered no realistic plan to provide alternative energy solutions to those people who truly need them.

That post received a healthy amount of banter and even a couple of challenges, so I decided to write another one, to keep you informed about the fight as I see it. Let’s agree that it is within the power of Congress to bring the price at the pump down. There are any number of contributing factors to the high price of gas; but they all come down to an essential problem- supply is stagnant while demand increases. The supply and demand imbalance is fueling investor speculation, and OPEC’s confidence that it can charge as much as they want for crude.

We have seen what happens when the United States signals it will increase domestic supply, as the President did last week: the price begins to fall. When Congress follows that action with our own plan to increase supply, we should see the price of crude fall even more.

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It is a great honor to represent the scenic stretch of Tennessee from Clarksville to Nashville, to Memphis. Anchored by Tennessee’s great metropolitan centers, the heart of my district is the rural engine of Tennessee’s economy and home to the men and women who work the land every day. These are the true environmentalists and conservationists, those for whom clean air and clean water isn’t an abstract notion, but the vital force that keeps the corn, cotton and soybeans growing. They are among the hardest hit by escalating energy prices.

Contrast them with the other “environmentalists”. These are the latte’ sipping earth-first-istas who believe corn is more appropriately poured into a gas tank than into corn meal muffins. Their environmental experience is a drive through the Napa Valley. “Pay more, drive less” is an option for them because they don’t have to depend on hauling goods to market to make their living. After all those spinning classes, they think nothing of a brisk bike ride to the office.

My constituents and I live a very different lifestyle. While the trial lawyers and green peacers sip proseca and chat politely about the fate of the ridge crested woodchuck; my constituents pile their kids into the mini-van and head to church, summer camp, swimming lessons, and baseball practice. They don’t want the liberal elites to make it more expensive to dream big dreams and turn those dreams into reality.

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