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Alaska senators introduce legislation to open Arctic Refuge to drilling

Posted at 4:22 PM on 13 Mar 2008

Photo: Madhav Pai

The push to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is back on. Alaska Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Ted Stevens have introduced legislation that would allow drilling in the Refuge if oil should hit $125 a barrel for five straight days. (For those keeping track at home, oil prices Thursday hit a record high of $111 a barrel.) "I can't believe that they would do this again; that dog won't mush," says Cindy Shogan of the Alaska Wilderness League, with an admirably Alaskan cliché. A Sierra Club spokesperson postulates that the legislation has neither much support outside Alaska nor enough votes to overcome a filibuster in the Senate. But still.

sources: Anchorage Daily News, Associated Press

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Comments: (7 comments)

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They Just Won't Stop

These people will not stop until they have destroyed all of nature for the sake of their greed.

How are the corruption investigations going on these two?

by BobG at 8:48 AM on 14 Mar 2008

Local politics

This doesnt hurt Murkowski or Stevens any with the locals -- Stevens can make lobbying calls from his prison cell. Nice photo op there. They can blame Dems for high gas prices -- making sense has never posed a problem for Stevens before. What they can't do is pass this nonsense into law. 2006 put an end to the drilling threat, and the numbers strongly favor Democratic gains in the Senate this year. What we need to protect is the REST of Alaska, including the wolves they're shooting.

by davedenali at 10:35 AM on 14 Mar 2008

"the wolves they're shooting"

I strongly dislike judging people whom I have not met, and whose circumstances I have never observed.

But really, Alaskans are on the fringe.

Two old (?!; do the epithets "cutting-edge" and "real-time" so easily narcotize us into disgraceful neglect of the timelessly useful?) books, about ANWR and the Native people who live thereabouts, that I like a lot, are:

Subhankar Banerjee (et alii), "Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: Seasons of Life and Land."

Rick Bass, "Caribou Rising."

A recent novel, recommended to me by Gristmill's own Erik Hoffner, "Ordinary Wolves," by Seth Kantner, is not about ANWR, but provides an otherwise untold set of observations of Inupiaq/Anglo society in northwestern Alaska, including attitudes on the hunting and killing of animals, with special interest in the horrible non-sport of shooting wolves from snowmobiles and airplanes.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

by caniscandida at 12:10 AM on 15 Mar 2008

and lest we forget: trapping

Trapping animals, involving allowing them to get caught, then to suffer stress and pain for unendurably long periods of time, is an ancient and distinguished part of Western "civilization."

Famously, some animals bite off their caught legs, rather than remain confined, in pain and in dread.

The leading animal-rights ethicist David DeGrazia is the author of "Animal Rights: A Very Short Introduction," in that lovely series of "very short introductions" published by Oxford University Press. On page 40 (of the 2002 printing), there is a photo of a fox with its right forepaw caught in a trap, which is surely one of the most subtly yet powerfully poignant documents of animal suffering that we have. Notice the pained grimace of the fox, its frightened eyes as it looks away from the approaching photographer, the lowered ears, the cowering posture.

My understanding is that up in Alaska, trapping of animals as sensitive and vulnerable and prone to fear as we ourselves goes on all the time, 24/7/366, without question, as a matter of course.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

by caniscandida at 12:58 AM on 15 Mar 2008

Alaskans

Don't get hung up on Judeo-Christian brainwashing like whether it's OK to judge others. Everyone needs to be held accountable for everything (s)he does in order to provide maximum environmental protection and to just generally provide a better society to live in. The issue is how to protect the Earth, not whether we're judging people. Religious brainwashing is, unfortunately, very powerful, but we need to fight it, both publicly and in personal situations. (It is legitimate to insist that people not speak and act hypocritically and it's certainly harder to correct one's own flaws than to see and complain about flaws in others, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't call a spade a spade.)

Who is elected in a particular constituency tells a lot about the members of that constituency. Alaskans constantly reelect Ted Stevens and the love their personal oil subsidies. While some people move there because they love the natural environment, most people move there because they want to make a buck and don't care if they have to destroy the natural environment to do it. Those things tell me all I need to know about Alaskans.

by Wolverine at 11:06 AM on 16 Mar 2008

wolves and oil in Alaska

There is another good book on the frontier-life in Alaska 'The Final Frontiersman' by James Campbell about Heimo Korth who obtains a 5-year renewable permit to live in the Artic National Wildlife Refuge since he was there in 1978 and continue to permit only his immediate living family until their death, hence the last frontiersman. It takes 9 or 10 months yearly -- working dawn til dusk or the equivalent in the Arctic twilight -- for his family of four to hunt and trap and fish and collect enough to support themselves in a vast area. That gives some indication to how fragile and unforgiving Alaska is, that it does not support large drilling companies or large building booms.

While his family respects the land (since it is possible to die at almost any time) and they respect this difficult lifestyle, there is a certain amount of old-school, its ours and therefore we have permission to take it.

by gardenmom at 8:32 AM on 19 Mar 2008
[ Parent ]

living in ANWR

Thanks, GardenMom, I had not heard of that book, nor did I know it was possible to get a permit to move to ANWR and live there.

Presumably that has to do with people who are not Native Alaskans. There are Inupiat on the coast, and Gwich'in on the southern border.

As beautiful as the place undeniably is, I think I speak for many people when I say that I have no overwhelming desire to go there myself and see it with my own eyes. The difficulties of traveling there, as well as the difficulties of staying there even a brief period for people such as myself with no camping experience, would make that highly impractical. But regardless, it is much more important to have the assurance that ANWR will remain pristine and unruined. And that is what makes it worth fighting for, completely aside from our personal aesthetic interests.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

by caniscandida at 9:01 AM on 19 Mar 2008

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