The Arctic National Wildlife Range, including the coastal plain targeted for drilling, was established in 1960 by Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower to preserve “wildlife, wilderness, and recreational values.” Twenty years later, it was expanded by Democrat Jimmy Carter and renamed the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
For decades, it has been protected through bipartisan cooperation and appreciation for its unique place in our nation’s constellation of parks, wilderness areas, and wildlife sanctuaries.
A few weeks ago, the Senate voted 51-49 to allow for drilling on the coastal plain, the biological heart of the refuge.
The refuge is one of the last intact ecosystems on the planet, still hosting all of the native plants and animals that have thrived there for millennia. Extending from the Beaufort Sea and the coastal plain, the refuge reaches south across the Brooks Range and into the sub-arctic homeland of the Gwich’in people. Its 20 million acres sustains the yearly cycle of the 100,000- strong Porcupine Caribou Herd, one of the last great migrations left on Earth.
Ecologically entwined with the herd is a suite of other animals, including grizzly bears, wolves, wolverine, fox and ermine. On the slopes above, Dall Sheep live year-round, following trails they’ve woven over the centuries. The refuge is the summer home for millions of birds that come from six continents and all 50 states. It is the place where the magical light of 24-hour days casts its touch upon lush summer slopes, and where the aurora borealis emits its eerie radiance in the minus-40-degree nights of winter darkness.
The refuge is about as close as one can get to the first days of creation.
The most optimistic projections for recoverable oil from this refuge would supply little more than a year’s worth of energy to the United States. That is still enough oil to make many individuals very rich.
However, different now from the last eight times the American people rejected the notion of drilling these public lands, the end of an oil- fueled economy is clearly in sight. Perhaps not today, perhaps not tomorrow, but surely by the end of this century. This is no longer just the prediction of doomsday environmentalists, but the response of a jittery Wall Street to record oil prices, the worried view of many world leaders and the informed opinion of resource economists and petroleum geologists.
Rather than squeezing our most precious lands for a little more than one more year of oil, might it not be more generous to let the refuge stand as a memorial to the time when we said:
“Enough; we have had enough. From this day forward, we will dedicate our riches and our creativity toward shaping an economy and a society not enslaved to fossil fuels. We have had enough of war, enough of global warming fears, enough of economic insecurity. As a nation, we choose to let this refuge remain inviolate as a testament to our commitment and our sincerity.”
Such a gesture of restraint could mark the moment in time when our country moved from a profligate adolescence to a more gracious maturity.
Before the recent Senate vote, I was in Washington to talk to members of our congressional delegation about the refuge. While there, I visited some museums and monuments. I was moved by words I read on the memorials, and by certain objects I saw in the collections and archives. Having spent a little time with Gwich’in visitors earlier in the week, my perspective on the duration of our country’s history was tempered by an awareness of their much longer time as “people of the caribou.”
Nearly 100 ago, another Republican president, Theodore Roosevelt, spoke upon the rim of the Grand Canyon: “Leave it as it is. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it. All you can do is keep it for your children, your children’s children, and all who come after you.”
In the coming months, the current administration, so fond of veiling itself in the mantle of patriotism, will carry on its efforts to undermine this national legacy. It will continue to eviscerate roadless-area protection on our national forests; it will further commercialize our national parks; it will rush to expedite oil and gas leases on Bureau of Land Management lands across the West; and it will push for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Amid all the talk of values, freedom and love of country, let us consider where true conservatism is to be found and on what ground we will take our stand.
