Excerpt from Chad Kister’s upcoming second edition to Arctic Melting:
How Climate Change is Destroying One of the World’s Largest Wilderness
Areas with Common Courage Press.
Release October 27, 2008.
With someone so beholden to the oil industry, it should not
be a surprise that a jury found Senator Ted Stevens guilty of
failing to report gifts by the oil company Veco, for which
Stevens
has worked to give massive contracts.
The verdict followed an
investigation by the FBI and IRS for allegedly accepting oil
industry bribes
for political favors.
Oil consulting firm Veco hired contractors that more than
doubled the size of Stevens’ home in 2000. On July 30,
2007,
FBI agents arrived with a locksmith at about noon at
Stevens’
resort. Half a dozen federal agents parked at the house, with
about
10 more federal vehicles parking a few blocks away at the ski
resort.
They had the blinds down while they searched the house,
and one carried out a black trash bag of stuff. One FBI agent
told
media that they were investigating whether Stevens’ paid
for
the work, and whether it was a bribe. The IRS is
investigating
whether Stevens accepted monetary benefits without paying
taxes
on them.
Ted Stevens’ son, Ben Stevens, allegedly received $284,000
for phony consulting fees from Veco while he was the state
senate
president. Four former Alaskan legislators are charged with
being
bribed by the oil industry. Veco CEO Bill Allen, who oversaw
the
work on Ted Stevens’ house, plead guilty in May, 2007 to
bribing
state legislators. He has agreed to cooperate with
investigators.
investigation. Veco allegedly held “the pig roast”
fundraisers for the
representative, and gave Young $157,000 through their
employees
and political action committee between 1996 and 2006.
Young talks like an oil company. On May 18, 2006 he lied
to the House of Representatives in a successful effort to
oppose
a global warming resolution that had passed the Senate. Young
said that other countries burn as many barrels of oil as the
United
States burns today. In fact, the
oil in 2005, while the second largest user,
7 million barrels. Young also said polar bears are increasing
in
numbers, another lie that is well documented earlier in this
book.
My
First Personal Encounter With Ted Stevens
After backpacking for two weeks in the Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge in August, 2005, my bush pilot landed on the
familiar airstrip for the Inupiat
in the
our plane and asked the pilot how the weather was, because
the
Senator was flying in. I asked which Senator, to which he
said Ted
Stevens. I rushed to get cleaned up as fast as I could, then
went
Kister
Melting update 2008 222 5/20/08 3:58:05 PM
Chapter
title 223
over to the meeting at the community building.
Stevens held the meeting to try to show support for oil
drilling, but he found quite the opposite. I entered the
meeting,
and Senator Stevens was talking to citizens.
I shook his hand and said I had just returned from the refuge
two hours ago, and that the area needed to be protected from
oil
development.
Stevens said, “son, I’ve been working to open up that
area since before you were born.” In fact, Stevens spoke
for the
protection of the coastal plain area when he was a state
senator in
the 1950s. It was only when he got close with the oil
industry that
he changed his stand on drilling in the area.
His aids then tried to push me outside. I said no, this was
a public meeting, and that I would stay. I then tried to take
a
photograph, and even though the rest of the people were
allowed,
the Senator said that no, I would not be allowed to take a
photo
because I was not media. I said I was media, that I was
writing
articles for the Yukon News, and also books and was working
on
a documentary.
I sat in the front of the meeting. As the Senator said that
the 1980 legislation stated that the 1002 area would be
opened
to oil development after study, I began to shake my head in
opposition. That legislation in fact said the area should
either
remain as wilderness, or be opened to oil development with a
future Congress needing to make that decision after studying
the
issue: a big difference. The Senator then stopped his talk
and said
that he would have me removed if I continued to shake my
head.
This is blatant intimidation. While I did stop shaking my
head, because I wanted to cover the meeting and not be
forcibly
removed, fearing it would harm my video camera and 25 hours
of
footage for my Caribou People film, this action was very
wrong. It
showed the tyranical and abusive nature of a Senator that
does not
understand the democratic process of the
acting as a dictator that everyone must follow.
While he spouts misinformation about how the residents
of Kaktovik supposedly are all in favor of development, in
fact
Robert Thompson told the Senator he had a petition with 60
names on it opposing development. With 98 votes cast in the
2004
election, this is a majority of the voting public in the
small village.
This shows that the oil proponents’ argument that the
Inupiat in
Kaktovik are in favor of oil development is not true.
At the end of the meeting, I said the Arctic National
Wildlife
Refuge needs to be protected, and we need to save the bowhead
whale (which would be harmed by the proposed offshore
development). I was then forcibly pushed out of the meeting
by
Secret Service Agents and the same police officer that I had
seen
at the airstrip.