TO DRILL OR NOT TO DRILL

Ever since the March 16th passing of the US Senate's $2.8 trillion budget resolution for 2007, which included a $3 billion benefit from gas and oil leasing on the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve (ANWR), I've been deluged with letters and emails from conservation groups urging me to act immediately to save the refuge. What actions do they urge me to take? Improve my home's insulation? Ride my bicycle to work? Don't be silly! All I have to do to save ANWR is write them a check!

The debate about whether or not to drill in ANWR has been brewing quite publicly for several years, so you'd think we'd all understand the situation pretty well by now, but I think I speak for more than my share when I say I'm still a bit lost. A couple of years ago I went to a public ANWR forum sponsored by the local chapter of one of the big national conservation groups, in hopes of gaining some insight on the issue. I'm not quite sure what I expected, but insight was not what I got--just overblown hyperbole and self-righteous chest thumping about how good ANWR is and how bad “Big Oil” is. It reminded me of George Bush's vilification of Saddam Hussein. Making Exxon or Hussein look bad isn't much of a task, folks; once you resort to lying and exaggerating, you've lost me. When the bluster and finger-pointing ended, we all left the building, and practically every individual got into his/her own automobile. Half an hour was required to drain the cars from the parking lot, leaving a lingering hydrocarbon perfume.

This exemplified the American conservationist's dilemma. We don't want logging but we want wood products. We don't want electrical plants but we want electricity. We don't want population growth but we want families. We don't want oil drilling and we want to be able to hop in our car and drive across town to talk about how much we don't want it. The real enemies of wilderness in this country are not the miners and ranchers, but our own pursuit of an ever higher standard of living and our paradigm of continual economic growth. Most of the major conservation groups, I'm afraid, have completely bought into these models. In most cases, less good comes from donating $1,000 to a conservation group than from simply failing to earn it in the first place.

Our entire reality is based on the fact that for the past century, we've had essentially free energy in the form of petroleum. Soon, perhaps very soon, the supply will be increasingly difficult to extract, and increasingly more expensive, both monetarily and ecologically. Right now, the question I'd like to be able to answer is, “What kind of oil production does the least ecological harm?” I've seen appalling degradation in the Gulf of Guinea, where some 15% of America's petroleum originates. Here in Utah, much of our local oil production is small scale stuff that has a comparatively minimal impact. The problem with these little operations is that each one has the potential to explode overnight into a huge "city" like the Jonah Field, where the sage steppes have been rendered useless for wildlife.

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge comprises 19 million acres (about the size of Maine) in the northeast corner of Alaska, dwarfing the oil fields at Prudhoe Bay, to the west. The entire area lies above the Arctic Circle, and is divided into three sections. The southern 9.16 million acre parcel runs mostly through the Brooks Range, and is designated as a refuge. To the north of that lies 8.31 million acres of legal wilderness. It is the 1.5 million acres of coastal plain, an area slightly larger than Delaware, in the northwest section of ANWR that is in dispute. This is the so-called 10-02 area, which has a complicated legal designation. If I understand correctly, it has always been open to oil and gas exploration, but only with prior congressional approval.

I have never been to the arctic and have little knowledge of arctic ecology. I'm still unsure where ANWR oil drilling would fall on the scale of ecological destruction, but it's clear that neither the oil interests nor the conservation interests will be of much help in figuring that out.
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upper: ULTIMA THULE--MUSK OXEN (1989) acrylic 15" x 20"
lower: GRAY GYRFALCONS (1999) acrylic diptych 15" x 20"; 30" x 20"