You're probably against drilling in the Alaskan Refuge, but what you really ought to be worried about is offshore drilling on Alaska's continental shelf, which isn't protected by law or by close attention from environmentalists -- and where the likelihood and impact of accidents are far worse. Read Peter Matthiessen's definitive piece in The Nation:
When one considers the more than four thousand spills -- over one a day -- recorded by the oil industry in its land operations in the last decade, and keeping in mind that offshore hazards are far greater, the inevitable accidents seem certain to accumulate into an ongoing and permanent calamity. A black effluvia of crude petroleum and drilling mud and chemical pollutants would spread inshore, suffocating plankton and invertebrates and bottom-dwelling fish and poisoning great stretches of Arctic coast with a viscous excrescence. The same toxic mixture will blacken the drifting ice, fouling the pristine habitat of Arctic birds, the Pacific walrus, four species of seals, and the beleaguered polar bear, while contaminating the migratory corridors of the white beluga and endangered bowhead whales -- all this defilement made much worse by the grim fact that no technology has ever been developed for cleaning up spilled oil in icy waters.
Top 25 reasons to give a damn about climate change
Oil: enough energy to melt glaciers!
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caniscandida Posted 8:38 am
08 Nov 2007
It is interesting that back then, just a few years ago, when the concern was that the coastal plain of ANWR would be drilled, and so disrupt the migration of the caribou, the principal opponents were the Gwich'in, the northernmost Athabascan Indians, whose traditional lifestyle is dependent on hunting caribou. The Inupiat, the Inuit of Alaska's north coast, did not protest so strongly or unanimously, since they did not feel themselves so directly affected; and some seem actually to have believed they might profit from the presence of the extraction crews. So the pro-drilling people in DC unfortunately were able to point to a few Inupiat from Kaktovik and say, "See, even the Native Alaskans support drilling in ANWR!"
So things look different now.
Matthiessen writes:
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Like most coastal Inupiat villages, Kaktovik had been allotted a quota of three bowhead whales in an annual noncommercial hunt, a traditional event authorized by the International Whaling Commission. Even five years ago, when I first met Thompson in the Arctic refuge, he was already worried by the growing threat of offshore oil activity, fearing that it might dislocate the whales' migration paths: like the caribou of the Gwich'in Athabascans that calve and summer in the refuge, the whale is a sacred animal and cultural symbol of the hardy, industrious Inupiat, whose ancient subsistence culture has always depended upon a wild harvest.
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Senator Lisa Murkowski, in her message to Gristmill earlier today, expressed concern for the interests of Native Alaskans, including the preservation of the migration routes of animals. We shall see how impressed she is by Matthiessen's essay.
Chickens are our cousins! So are fish! So are other sentient animals! Let us learn to be kind.
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