Quite appropriately, the debate over the future of America’s wilderness has ceased during this time of mourning, when our nation must focus on helping those who’ve lost loved ones and strengthening our security. Still, environmental debates may pause, but they don’t go away forever.
Sometime this fall, the Senate will decide the fate of one of the world’s most significant wilderness preserves, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Sometime soon, Congress and the U.S. Forest Service will also determine the fate of the largest remaining temperate rainforest on Earth, Alaska’s Tongass.
I am a wilderness advocate. I spent most of summer 2000 at Denali National Park, so far north that 90 percent of the park is treeless tundra and 20-foot snowdrifts blocked the only park road – in June. This past summer, I spent eight days hiking and kayaking in the old-growth forest of the Tongass. For me, perhaps naively, explaining the ecological significance of the Arctic Refuge is like explaining the physiological importance of breathing – I want to say “Trust me. It’s there” and move on.
Despite what you may hear, drilling in the Refuge won’t put a dent in our nation’s dependence on foreign oil. The U.S. Geological Service called the chances of finding another Prudhoe Bay-sized oil field in the refuge “remote,” and if drilling did produce any oil, production would take 10 years. Americans could “find” far more oil through modest increases in fuel economy, but last spring, Congress refused to increase federal fuel-economy standards.
What drilling for oil would mean is this: 280 miles of roads, hundreds of miles of pipelines, 50 million cubic yards of gravel scraped from area ponds and rivers. In short, large-scale industrial production facilities in the middle of the most pristine wild land we have left. Prudhoe Bay facilities pour 43,000 tons of poisonous nitrogen oxides into the once-pure Arctic air each year, and just a few years back, the federal government fined BP Oil more than $20 million for North Slope pollution violations.
Literally thousands of miles away, in Alaska’s ruggedly beautiful southeastern panhandle, the last great expanse of old-growth rainforest in the U.S. faces its own threat from industrial development. Americans have no idea what they’ve already lost: clearcuts have claimed nearly half of the Tongass’ best old-growth stands from a nation that has no idea what “old growth” was.
It is also one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen. But this is real wilderness – over a million acres of roadless wild that still looks the same as it did the day humans set foot there.
Plans for logging roads threaten the Tongass. The Forest Service is proceeding with roadless area timber sale plans. And if those sales go forward, they will go forward at the American taxpayer’s expense: In recent years, the Forest Service has lost an average of $40 million per year on Tongass timber sales. Forest products jobs account for only a little more than 2 percent of the jobs in Southeast Alaska.
If you want to speak out against actions intended to devastate the Arctic Refuge or Tongass roadless areas, contact Senators DeWine and Voinovich at (202) 224-3121 or at the Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C. 20510, or find their email addresses at www.senate.gov.
Drilling in the Refuge will most likely come before the Senate in October as part of the energy bill, which is an environmental disaster in its own right. The energy bill includes $40 billion in taxpayer handouts to industry, much of it to promote the use of high-polluting coal.
David Scott is a graduate student and a 1986 graduate of OSU’s College of Law. He is vice-president of the Sierra Club for the Midwestern U.S. He can be reachedfor comment at [email protected].
