Comments on: At Home in the Arctic Refuge: An Inupiaq Perspective

By: Clia Toris IV

Clia Toris IV — Sat, 31 Dec 2005 16:51:57 +0000

My response to: The Wisdom of Arctic Oil – The Luxury of Running Water by Tara Sweeney
The crazy thing is if we would have started drilling under their igloos – they wouldn’t have known what we were doing anyway. Remember these are people who, until very recently, used whale blubber, caribou meat and seal fur as currency. Who is claiming they’re owed something? Tara Sweeney- right wing stoolie? It’s not them telling us we owe them, it’s us telling them we owe them. Call it white man’s guilt or, if you’re a liberal politician, come up with something more politically correct to call it. Either way it’s ridiculous. Here is another analogy – to the Indians of the great plains (circa 1870): Relax we don’t want your buffalo (number one food and material source) we just need your South Dakota uranium. Do we really owe them? Did they have a practical use for uranium anyway? Catch my drift?
Oh, Hmmm, I get it. We don’t really feel like we owe them shit. We just want to pretend we do. It’s a sympathy play. Who is against poor Indians living in poverty? Not me.
Wait a minute. Just imagine that these really are real Indians jumping up and down on an ice flow chanting, “exploit us, exploit us, exploit us!” We ought to give them what they want you say?
Beads for Manhattan? If you would have polled the Manhattan Indians around 1680 they would have insisted up and down that they got a fair shake. Arctic drilling as reparations? I’m not sure if it’s a conservative or liberal argument. No one told the Inuits that they had to permanently settle and stay around the Arctic circle. Plenty of their relatives headed a lot further south after they migrated over the Bering Sea thousands of years ago. It’s hard to feel sorry for them. Hey, life’s a bitch anywhere above the 60th parallel. Certainly, it’s difficult to make an argument supporting Arctic drilling on their behalf. Surely, someone can come up with something better. Call me (email me – you know what I mean) when you do. In the mean time…
http://www.dungtongue.com

By: Clia Toris IV

Clia Toris IV — Sat, 31 Dec 2005 16:51:00 +0000

By: Laura

Laura — Wed, 26 Oct 2005 20:09:42 +0000

David:
The U.S. only possesses 3% of world’s oil reserves. This includes ANWR, offshore drilling and those reserves in the Rocky Mountain West and in the National Parks. No amount of drilling will ever bridge this gap; we will always be vastly dependent on foreign oil as long as oil is our main source of energy. This is just a simple fact. Also, oil is put on the world market, so there is a good chance that a substantial percentage of oil produced from ANWR, should it be drilled, will be exported to China and India. And a good chance that the state of Alaska will sue to secure 90% of the oil/revenue (a right alotted to them by the Alaska Statehood Act).
In Prudhoe Bay there are 400-500 oil spills a year. In 1989, the Exxon-Valdez spill killed roughly 250,000 animals, including many endangered species and ruined the marine habitat. Currently, as the Arctic Refuge is included in the Budget Reconciliation Bill, there are clauses to exempt drilling from NEPA (the National Environmental Protection Act) review and U.S. Fish and Wildlife intervention (which is instead shifted to the Secretary of the Interior, who does not have extended knowledge of the biodiversity of the plain). How can we “get the oil and protect our precious wildlife resources” while at the same time waiving many the existing environmental regulations?

By: Laura

Laura — Wed, 26 Oct 2005 20:09:00 +0000

By: David McFarland

David McFarland — Wed, 19 Oct 2005 04:15:40 +0000

I too am concened about the preservation of wildlife in ANWR. But the national security of this nation rests in a large part on our being energy self sufficient. I believe that drilling and oil production and nature can and must coexist in a way that will protect the wildlife not only in ANWR but in the lower 48 where we have the greatest concentration of oil shale in the world. Every American must support the extraction of these precious resources for our own use, so we all can be safe from anti-american extremists including the Marxists in charge in Venezuala to the Ismalist extremists running Iran, to the evil criminals blowing up oil fields and killing America’s sons and daughters in Iraq. They would use our dependence on foreign oil to destroy us. We can get the oil and protect our precious wildlife resources at the same time. If America is to survive as the greatest nation the world has ever seen, we must succeed at getting the oil while protecting our wildlife. It is a battle worth waging.

By: David McFarland

David McFarland — Wed, 19 Oct 2005 04:15:00 +0000

By: Linda Corbin

Linda Corbin — Fri, 14 Oct 2005 02:02:27 +0000

I totally agree. I believe the Native people of the Arctic need to be able to sustain their life style as they have known it over hundreds of years, if not more. Look at what “progress” has done to the Native Americans in the lower 48!! It’s one of the worst crimes ever committed by the white man’s “industrial progress”, and the future generations of Native Americans all over are paying, and paying and paying….and the gov’t. continues to lie today and every day.

By: Linda Corbin

Linda Corbin — Fri, 14 Oct 2005 02:02:00 +0000