The timeline is short. In the next four to six weeks will come the decision of whether or not to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (hereafter referred to as "Arctic") to oil drillers, which will come with great subsidies to the oil prospecting firms permitted to drill. (How strange the United States is, giving subsidies to highly (even obscenely) profitable corporations while taking away the pittances given to single parents to help bring up their children and the pittances allowed for health care.)
The bill incorporating the United States' Vice-President's infamous energy plan passed the House of Representatives in July, and is now before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. The Committee will be working on it by the end of September and, if it passes out of committee, the full Senate will probably vote on it by mid-October.
For those readers living in the United States and who care about leaving an untouched place on the northern shore of Alaska still untouched, now is the time to hound your Senators to fight any opening of the Arctic to oil prospecting. And if you live in Hawaii, please, please, please call Senator Akaka's office and tell him of your support for the protection of the Arctic! And if you live in Louisiana, do the same with Senator Landrieu!
One or more of the Congressional delegation from Alaska has stated that if you haven't been to the Arctic, then you don't deserve to have a voice in its demise or protection. One could turn that back on him (and they are all "hims") and tell him that he can no longer vote on protecting or not protecting places in which he has never been or regarding issues which have never personally affected him.
For nearly all of us, the essence of the Arctic comes only from photographs and writings. And there have been some wonderful writings published in various newspapers in the past few months from people who have been in the Arctic. They speak of the essence of the wildest of places, even through the clouds of mosquitoes. It is possible to live vicariously through their words. Photographs can be more deceiving sometimes, in their perspectives, but it is not to say that the beauty doesn't exist.
I was writing the other morning about photographs, which came from remembering the smell of coming autumn in Vermont. Photographs don't relate the experientiality of the human senses, not even the visual sense. Perhaps the experience of a photograph can never be enough. In this fight to save the Arctic, we are using photographs and words. As each person writes of their experiences of the senses received while actually in the Arctic, each comes from a different set of values. For some it is the need of wildlife to keep their patterns, for some it's the sheer aloneness of the place, for some it's the cultural needs of their people, but for some it's a wasteland and good for the trash of oil production.
It doesn't matter if the photographs convey less than the human experience of the Arctic. What does matter is when you compare them with the photographs of Prudhoe Bay, its oil production detritus and approximately 400 oil spills annually. And you ask, is this to be the experience of the Arctic coast to the east of Prudhoe?
Does the Porcupine herd of Caribou deserve this stress? Do the flocks of summering Arctic birds deserve to lose nesting grounds? All because the people in the United States refuse to curb their oil-drenched appetite for the "good life?" My resounding answer is "no"!
A place which serves itself in water, soil, vegetation, and animal health deserves to be left alone. We have so subsumed that every piece of ground must serve us — must provide a measurable benefit for humankind. We need to get out of that totally human-oriented mind-speak of thinking. If we haven't yet left our human livelihood footprint on an area of land, then it deserves to be left alone in terms of providing any resources for us.
(And a growing population is no excuse, because we should not be growing. We should reach stasis as soon as possible — next month's column, maybe.)
For readers in other countries, if you look around, I'm sure that there are some wild places in your country that are under attack to serve human needs. I hope that you will fight for its wildness.
For more information on the Arctic, visit The Wilderness Society's Webpage
Copyright 2001 by Cherie Staples
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