Oil Exploration in the Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

You probably have seen numerous TV news reports discussing drilling for oil in the ANWR. Typically, during the voice over news report, the background video displays spectacular natural features in Alaska, such as the majestic Brooks Range mountains or the Yukon River, complete with caribou, salmon, bears, and a panorama of incredibly beautiful landscapes.

But that is not the coastal plain of the ANWR where oil is located. That part of the 19 million acre ANWR is a flat, treeless, and featureless 1.5 million acre desert of frozen tundra that extends from the Brooks Range northward to the Beaufort Sea. The temperature can drop below -40 degrees Fahrenheit during the 56 days of total darkness in the winter. Very few animals inhabit the coastal plain especially in winter.

Several species of birds, a few polar bears that den on the Beaufort Sea pack ice, and lemmings that burrow beneath the snow are the only animals that endure the long winters. May or June brings a few more birds, the arctic fox, and a portion of the Porcupine caribou herd.

Environmentalists usually cite the caribou and polar bear as the most threatened animal species if oil exploration is allowed. The coastal plain is not an important polar bear habitat, as few are observed in the area. As for the caribou, that issue was put to rest decades ago after the Alyeska oil pipeline was built. Environmentalists and their press enablers had a meltdown in the 1970s, warning that the caribou herd would be decimated. The caribou, they said, would not reproduce due to construction of the heated pipeline and proximity of humans in their wilderness habitat. After construction of the pipeline the central Arctic caribou herd grew from 6,000 in 1978 to about 25,000 today according to estimates by wildlife agencies. (There are over a million caribou statewide). Caribou actually calve and graze around the clearings near the warm pipeline. I worked along the pipeline for 2 years and I have seen it myself. They even hang around the drill rigs in Prudhoe Bay as trucks drive by. They don’t even look up.

So what gives? Either these news reporters are too lazy to do their homework, are clueless on anything remotely scientific, or are purposefully encouraging the devolution of freedom and democracy into Marxism. The typical way to create a Marxist regime is to take away fundamental necessities, then endear themselves to the population by rationing it back (party loyalists get more). I suspect it is a combination of all these motives, but mostly reporters are just too lazy. They allow themselves to be manipulated by Marxist environmentalists. These are the truly dangerous people. Not the rank and file dupes, but the leadership who are the greatest and best hope of the disaffected communists who now use environmental doom as the new fear tactic to lead us into another try at utopia.

We will get nowhere with the MSM. But with so much new media available, the rest of us, all of us, need to sound the clarion call repeatedly: The United States needs to become energy independent, and soon. Drill in the ANWR, off our shores, and anywhere else on our soil. We have the technology to do it safely and we cannot allow foreign terrorists or opportunist nations to threaten our freedom. There is nowhere to escape to this time.


Coastal Plain of ANWR (during daylight and without snow)