Save the Arctic!

America is dependant on oil. The average American uses 40 times as much petroleum as the average Chinese citizen. We import massive amounts of oil from South America and the Middle east and we drill in our own country till Texas and half of Alaska look like Swiss cheese. Still, the bottomless American gas tanks are sucking down the petroleum and the ever-hungry eyes of the oil industry are turning towards the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. This is a huge tract of land in Alaska rightfully owned and inhabited by various tribes of Inuputat Indians (A.K.A. Eskimos) eeking out a subsistence living from the fragile tundra. This land is also set aside as a refuge for the Arctic’s incredible array of animals, including a threatened population caribou.

So everybody is fighting over weather we should drill up there or not, or at least they were arguing, but with an entirely Republican dominated government the argument seems to be over.

Well, I am adamantly opposed to drilling there and let me give you some good reasons to agree with me.

The American wilderness is disappearing at such a rapid rate that it only truly exists in northern Alaska and the back corner of a few imaginations. This last truly wild place should be preserved! The most optimistic estimates say that even if we drill those oil fields that it will reduce our gas prices by a maximum of 10 cents, and may take a decade to do even that. I don’t know about you, but it is definitely worth it to me to pay 10 cents per gallon to know that we have one true wilderness in our hyper modernized nation, that caribou still freely breed and migrate, that polar bears still wander across the frozen seas, that the migratory birds still have a place to nest, and that there is at least one tribe of Native Americans that we didn’t uproot, displace, rob, or slaughter.

This land is owned by native people who have followed the same time honored traditions, raised their kids the same ways, and hunted the same animals for countless centuries. Of course, they have the right to change their way of living, but it is wrong to take their land from them or to drill it, leaving only a hollow shell of what it once was. How can a person survive hunting Caribou that can’t breed any longer? How does a tribe continue to live out its traditions when they are surrounded by oil rigs and pipelines.

Let’s face it. America is entirely dependant on foreign oil, and that’s not going to change. If OPEC stopped selling to us, we’d either be totally paralyzed as a society, or we would pull out our nukes and start bombing people (most likely the latter). Also oil prices are going higher and higher as global supplies dwindle. What will happen where there is no more oil left? What will happen when only a little remains? Doesn’t it make more sense to store our oil in the Alaskan “bank”? If we find another source of energy before we have a serious crises, then that is excellent! However, when there are only a couple of reserves left, where do you want them to be? Do you want to have our total economy and culture dependant solely on Saudi Arabia? I don’t, either they would be ripping us off, or we would be killing them. Either way is bad. What oil is left will be of astronomical value, let’s not use that now.

So in summery, let’s not drill because it would be destroying something rare and precious. But if we have to, let’s be smart about it and not do it until we need to.