Pioneers moving west in the 1800s said they only wanted permission to travel across Indian land on a ‘trail the width of a Conastoga wagon.’
Who could refuse a request so modest? The land was immense. The herds of buffalo and elk were boundless. Tiny people rolling across the Great Plains hardly would be noticed.
Who knew how many trails there would be? Who knew about the iron horse or what it would bring on the tracks no wider than a wagon?
Some visionaries predicted what would happen. One, the Tsistsistas prophet Sweet Medicine, foretold the coming of the white man, veho (spider), who would make a web that would cover all the land. People heard the warning, but did not see the signs.
Today, the Senate turns its attention to a modern trail that big oil and the Bush administration want to open for drilling in the pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Developers and friends emphasize that ANWR is as large as South Carolina and all they want is a small strip of land the size of an airport.
Where do they want this airport of roads, rigs, pipelines, waste and parking lots? In the richest part of ANWR, along the coastal plain, where fish spawn and bears, musk oxen, wolves and migratory birds replenish themselves, raise their youngsters and get ready for harsh winters and long flights.
The area targeted for development is the ‘Sacred Place Where Life Begins,’ as the Gwich’in People call it. It is the calving area for the Porcupine caribou herd, the equivalent of the buffalo to the Gwich’in. These caribou figure centrally in Gwich’in ceremonial and subsistence life.
The local Inupiats, who do not depend on the caribou, favor development and the royalties it would bring to them and all Alaskans.
Proponents of ANWR drilling are quick to point to the thriving herd in nearby Prudhoe Bay and to the poster caribou snuggling up to an oil pipeline there. One difference is that the Prudhoe caribou had an alternative calving area. The Porcupine herd has no place else to go.
Gwich’ins and environmentalists warn that development and inevitable spills could devastate the entire ecosystem. Early this year, the Environmental News Network reported that Prudhoe oil fields and the trans-Alaska pipeline caused an average of 407 spills annually on Alaska’s North Slope since 1996.
‘From 1994 to 1999, approximately 1,600 spills occurred involving more than 1.2 million gallons of oil, diesel fuel, acid, biocide, ethylene glycol, drilling fluid, produced water and other liquids,’ reported ENN. ‘A study of diesel spills in Alaska’s Arctic found that, after 28 years, substantial hydrocarbons remained in the soil and most of the vegetation in the area of the spills had not recovered.’
In the weeks leading up to the House vote on the Energy Security Act, Republican managers included an ANWR ‘compromise,’ paring the president’s proposal of 1.5 million acres to 2,000 acres. The House approved ANWR drilling on Aug. 1 by voting down a motion to strike it, by 223 to 206.
The managers loaded up the bill with goodies to entice wide support, such as $13 billion in tax credits and other benefits for the oil industry. The final bill, that the administration estimates would reduce the budget surplus by some $30 billion, was passed by a comfortable 51-vote margin.
Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, gave ‘total credit to the unions’ for the victory in the House. With prompting from Secretary of Labor Elaine L. Chao, lobbyists for the Teamsters and other unions jumped into the energy bill with an 11th-hour claim that developing ANWR would produce 750,000 jobs nationwide.
The jobs projection tipped the balance for a dozen Democrats. In all, 36 Democrats crossed party lines to support drilling and 34 Republicans opposed it.
It turns out that the Teamsters’ projection was way off the mark, by more than 700,000 jobs. Environmental groups say the unions relied on faulty research and that only 46,000 jobs would result from drilling in ANWR.
Carpenters joined the Teamsters in the pro-drilling lobby, which is sticking with its jobs estimate. President George W. Bush picnicked with members of both unions in Michigan and Wisconsin over the Labor Day weekend, declaring, ‘Our energy policy equals good jobs in America.’
A memorable sight in the 1999 ‘Battle of Seattle’ was union marchers linking arms with environmentalists in terrapin costumes, chanting, ‘Turtles and Teamsters together, ho ho.’ That’s not something anyone is likely to see again soon.
As soon as the House approved its energy bill, Sen. John F. Kerry, D-Mass., vowed ‘to filibuster any effort to drill in the refuge.’
It takes 60 votes to invoke cloture or to cut off a Senate filibuster. ‘I am not alone in this,’ said Kerry on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sept. 2, naming Senators Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., and Joseph I. Lieberman, D-Conn., among his allies.
Teamsters head James P. Hoffa asked Kerry to ‘let the process work,’ claiming that his side had the votes to block a filibuster, but should only have to raise 51 votes, not 60.
Hoffa says Alaska drilling will yield 16 billion barrels of oil and lessen U.S. dependence on foreign oil. The Bush administration’s highest estimate is 10 billion, ‘the equivalent of just six months of U.S. consumption,’ according to Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham. Prudhoe Bay has produced 13 billion barrels in 30 years. ANWR would not produce any oil for at least 10 years.
Kerry says there are ‘many more jobs to be created in this country by pursuing a thoughtful energy policy that opens up alternatives and renewables and puts technology to use.’ He favors building the natural gas pipeline and the jobs it would create, but says ‘we should not violate this extraordinary refuge.’
The White House energy policy group reported in May that an ‘increase in the average fuel economy of the on-road vehicle fleet by three miles per gallon would save 1 million barrels of oil a day, or about half of the total shortfall between supply and demand that triggered the oil price increases since 1998.’
The House had the chance to enact a fuel efficiency measure that would save more energy than drilling in ANWR would yield, by closing the loophole allowing SUVs to get 20.7 miles per gallon, while cars must average 27.5 miles. Instead, House members protected the gas-guzzlers and then opened ANWR.
The energy bill, H.R. 2636, now goes before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, whose chairman Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., has pledged to stop legislation that would allow drilling in ANWR.
Sen. Frank H. Murkowski, R-Alaska, was chairman of the panel until the Senate shake-up in May, and remains its ranking minority member. He predicts that 12 of its 23 members will vote for drilling. Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, promises his own filibuster to force the Senate to approve drilling.
The Alaska senators have buttonholed colleagues since the 1980s to open ANWR for development. They accuse the recalcitrant of interfering in their backyard politics and state’s rights. It just isn’t done, they say. Or, as Young put it to his House colleagues, ‘How dare you stand there and talk about something when you’ve never even been there?’
Some congressional members believe they not only have a right, but a duty in certain debates no matter whose backyard is involved, especially regarding nationalized issues, such as Indian affairs and environmental and energy policy, the pertinent areas of the energy bill.
Kerry is one of those members. He says ANWR is an ‘amazing asset to the U.S. and for the world.’ As for the 2,000-acre limitation, he says, ‘Area isn’t the test ? area is completely fictitious. Prudhoe Bay is a small area, but puts out twice the emissions of global warming gases as Washington, D.C.’
I have an image of the entrance to the next world (or maybe the exit from this one) as being conditioned on a do-the-right-thing quiz. Among the questions would be, did you help save Native Peoples? Buffalo? Caribou? Sacred Places? Those who answer yes to a lot of them get a pass, along with the Gwich’in People.
Because they never gave up ? not 2,000 acres or any fictitious area. Not even a trail just the width of a Conastoga wagon.