Oil on Ice

I saw the feature documentary Oil on Ice at the Cambridge Film Festival last night. It's a film about the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and the proposal to extend drilling into it.

One fundamental point I hadn't grasped about the whole thing was that there has already been oil exploration along almost all of the northern coast of Alaska, and that the ANWR is just the final easternmost 20% or so, protected in response to the rest of the coast being developed. But as soon as the rest runs out, apparently the US can't resist the temptation to take the ANWR as well.

Anyway, as part of a segment on saving fuel, after talking about fuel-cells, biofuels etc, the Honda Insight was mentioned as the most efficient car currently on the market ("64mpg"), and the Prius got a longer feature for being a practical car having most sophisticated drivetrain available ("55mpg"). They didn't go into any technical details, but it was good to see someone appreciating the HSD (including a long lingering close-up on the engine bay ).