Don't let oil quest spoil Alaska's north slope, Russell Train

Don't let oil quest spoil Alaska's north slope

by Russell Train, Former EPA Administrator, Former Chariman of the Board of the World Wildlife Fund, and a member of REP's Honorary Board

published in the Sacramento Bee on November 16, 2000

President Clinton speaks often of his desire to leave an environmental legacy similar to that of Teddy Roosevelt's. In the final hours of his presidency, he has the opportunity to do it by extending permanent protection to the coastal plain of America's last true wilderness — the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).

Dubbed "America's Serengeti" for its extraordinary abundance of wildlife, the ANWR is again under threat from oil companies whose supporters hope to exploit anxieties over events in the Middle East to open the coastal plain to drilling.

This is not the first time oil companies have tried to invade the coastal plain. But until now they have been checked by opponents who recognize the area's irreplaceable natural value. The biological heart of the last unspoiled Arctic ecosystem in North America, the coastal plain is both a maternity ward and day care center for an extraordinary array of migratory species, many of them threatened.

Polar bears dig their maternity dens along the coast, while 130,000 Porcupine caribou make the long trek from Canada each year to deliver their young at the close of one of the last great mammal migrations left on the planet. Grizzly bears, musk oxen, wolverines, golden eagles and tundra swans are all part of a parade of more than 200 species that call this unique place home for at least part of the year.

But it is not just the animals whose way of life is threatened. The northmost Indian nation, the Gwich'in, claim an ancestry to this land dating back 20,000 years. They call themselves "caribou people," and to them the coastal nursery for the animals on which they depend for their existence is sacred and untouchable ground. If the caribou herd suffers because the calving grounds are disturbed, the Gwich'in way of life will disappear.

Seizing on consumer concern over oil prices, advocates used George W. Bush's support for drilling to reopen the issue in the presidential campaign. Their arguments, however, rest on distortions and half-truths less credible than a campaign commercial. Drilling advocates claim, for instance, that according to a U.S. Geological Survey, as much as 16 billion barrels of oil lie under the coastal plain.

What they don't say is that the same survey said there was only a 5 percent chance of there being anywhere near that much economically-recoverable oil. A more realistic estimate, it said, is 3.2 billion barrels — enough to satisfy domestic demands for five months.

Moreover, even if Congress authorized drilling tomorrow, oil wouldn't start flowing for another decade — by which time the nation will, it is hoped, be well on the way toward leading the world in the development of renewable fuels.

The oil companies also claim they can drill without leaving a damaging footprint. Yet across the North Slope, their record has been one of ruin. More than 1,500 miles of roads and pipelines and scores of refineries, plants and landfills scar the tundra, while toxic spills occur at the rate of one a day. Hundreds of abandoned wells and waste pits litter the landscape.

Do we really want to trade the future of America's last great wilderness — and that of the people and wildlife that depend upon it — for a few months worth of oil a decade down the road? The nation's pre-eminent biologists, ecologists and conservationists don't. Some 250 of them, including Harvard's E. O. Wilson and Stanford's Paul Ehrlich, recently sent a letter to Clinton urging him to extend national monument status to the coastal plain.

I think I know what Teddy would have done.