Arctic Drilling Included in Budget Bill!
President Bush lies with "2,000 acre" figure
While Bush says Drilling would take only a 2,000 acre foot print, that is
a grotesque lie. In fact the
development would sprawl throughout the million and a half acre costal plain:
the heart of the Arctic Refuge, an intact ecosystem of a hundred million acres
still entirely natural. The
National Academy of Sciences found that drilling around Prudhoe Bay had a
massive negative impact on the caribou and almost every other wildlife species.
More than 400 oil spills occur every year: more than one a day.
I backpacked through the oil field of Prudhoe Bay, and into the Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge. Prudhoe Bay is a massive industrial nightmare with
massive development and toxic waste spread over more than a thousand square
miles and for scores of miles in all directions. They have dredged enough
gravel to fill 90,000 football fields to a height of 3 feet with all of this
development. The oil companies
already have 95 percent of the North Slope, and now they are trying to destroy
the last bit of remaining wilderness.
It would take at least ten years to see oil from the Arctic Refuge to market.
It would provide such an insignificant amount that it would have virtually no
impact on the price of oil and would only increase U.S. production by 2 percent
at its peak production, up to 20 years after development would start, according
to the General Accounting Office.
Increasing
the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards to 39 miles per gallon,
however, would save well more than a hundred times more oil than would ever come
from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. In fact, more oil would be saved
in increasing the CAFE standards than is in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
before even a drop of oil from the refuge would get to market.
With
Ford having come out with an SUV hybrid-electric vehicle getting 39 miles per
gallon, this could easily be done without impacting peoples choice of vehicle.
Mid-sized cars can easily get 50-70 mpg.
The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge contains the last five percent of protected
North Slope of Alaska. It is this coastal plain that forms the heart of
the last intact Arctic ecosystem. From a range the size of California,
caribou migrate across the Brooks Mountain Range to mass together on the coastal
plain to give birth to the next generation of caribou.
These caribou feed 17 Gwich’in villages. The Gwich’in are caribou
people, who have lived for 30,000 years off the Porcupine Caribou Herd that
calves on the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, right where
they want to drill for oil. These are among the last native peoples on
Earth whose culture we have not yet destroyed. Can’t we leave one place,
and one culture be?
This is the densest denning area of polar bear in the world, home to one of the
last refuges of Muskox, grizzly bear, Arctic Wolves, Arctic Fox, and much more.
This is not just some place way up North, it affects everyone in every state of
the U.S. and 6 continents around the world. More than 160 species of birds
from 6 continents and all 50 states breed on the coastal plain of the Arctic
National Wildlife Refuge.
But the refuge has never been more threatened than now. All would be lost if
drilling is passed in the budget bill now before Congress. If drilling is
approved, this last refuge will be gone forever. This issue has nothing to
do with the budget: this is just a backdoor way to get drilling approved,
because the Budget Bill cannot be filibustered.
Now is the time to take action to save the refuge. Call your
Representative and Senators now: 1-202-224-3121. Find out more at: www.arcticrefuge.org
Kister
is author of Arctic Quest: Odyssey Through a Threatened Wilderness about his 700
mile journey by foot and raft through the Arctic Refuge, where he subsisted off
roots, berries, greens and fish.
* Note:
This is available in digital format at www.arcticrefuge.org