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Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumThe Trump Administration Wants to Sell a Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to Big Oil
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke says Alaska is open for business.What happens in the Arctic doesnt just stay up north. It affects the world, as that region is the integrator of our planets climate systems, atmospheric and oceanic. At the moment, the northernmost places on Earth are warming at more than twice the global average, a phenomenon whose impact is already being felt planetwide. Welcome to the world of climate breakdownand to the world of Donald Trump.
The set of climate feedbacks contributing to further warming in the Arctic are about to be aided and abetted by President Trump, his Interior Department, and a Republican-controlled Congress. The impact of their decisions will be experienced around the world. While the United States is still recovering from the deaths, suffering, and devastation caused by extreme hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria, as well as historically deadly wildfires across the West, Trumps Department of the Interior is preparing a five-year strategic plan that never once mentions climate change or climate science. It does, however, plan to open previously protected public lands of all sorts to the increased exploitation of fossil fuelsand Arctic Alaska is anything but exempt.
Alaska [is] open for business, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke told a cheering crowd at an Alaska Oil and Gas Association conference in Anchorage earlier this year. The secretary was visiting as part of a presidential mandate to prepare our country to be energy dominanteven though the United States has been the largest global producer of oil and gas since 2012 and, in this era, has often been referred to as Saudi America. What that energy-dominance slogan signals is nothing short of the beginning of a war against environmental conservation, justice, and the planet as a welcoming habitat for all life.
The only path for energy dominance is a path through the great state of Alaska, Zinke assured the Anchorage audience. What he evidently wants to do is sell off the most ecologically and culturally significant places in the state to Big Oil. On the sacrifice block is a long endangered stretch of public land, Area 1002, or the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a biological nursery of global significance and a place sacred to the indigenous Gwichin Nation. Like her father, also a Republican senator from Alaska, Lisa Murkowski is championing the task of opening the refuge to drilling by abusing the filibuster-proof budget process rather than debating this controversial issue as stand-alone legislation in Congress.
More: https://www.thenation.com/article/the-trump-administration-wants-to-sell-a-wildlife-refuge-in-alaska-to-big-oil/
Caribou graze on the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. (US Fish and Wildlife Service / CC BY 2.0)
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The Trump Administration Wants to Sell a Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to Big Oil (Original Post)
Rhiannon12866
Nov 2017
OP
In 1980, Jimmy Carter signed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act into law
Rhiannon12866
Nov 2017
#3
This kind of crappy thinking (if you can even call it that) infuriates me no end.
CaliforniaPeggy
Nov 2017
#2
Angry Dragon
(36,693 posts)1. republicans love raping this country
Rhiannon12866
(205,320 posts)3. In 1980, Jimmy Carter signed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act into law
Adding 9.8 million acres to the National Wildlife Refuge System. He was very unpopular in Alaska, had to have extra security on a visit there. The majority of Alaskans at the time wanted the money big oil would bring in, while the indigenous people sided with Carter. Looks like it's happening yet again...
CaliforniaPeggy
(149,611 posts)2. This kind of crappy thinking (if you can even call it that) infuriates me no end.
GODDAMN IT.
LEAVE ALASKA'S WILD PLACES WILD.
Rhiannon12866
(205,320 posts)4. They value big oil money over our forever wild places
Jimmy Carter signed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act into law in 1980, providing special protection to over 157,000,000 acres of land. He fought hard for it and was very unpopular in Alaska. The indigenous people of Alaska sided with Carter while the majority supported big oil. Looks like it's happening again.
LastLiberal in PalmSprings
(12,585 posts)5. Enjoy it while you can...
Rhiannon12866
(205,320 posts)6. Thank you! Beautiful country - and animals.
OregonBlue
(7,754 posts)7. They have no souls.