By Dan Calabrese ——Bio and Archives--February 15, 2018
Global Warming-Energy-Environment | CFP Comments | Reader Friendly | Subscribe | Email Us
Having struggled with this for a long time, the answer to my torment isn't pretty. My objection to the exploration of ANWR comes from the selfish perspective of "I got mine and I don't care if you get yours." I am not a young person struggling to put milk and cereal on the table for my children. I don't have to dream about having a nice place to live or a decent vehicle to drive, or being able to afford to visit the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. I have those things. In a perfect world, there would be no need to develop ANWR or any of the other semi-wild places targeted for such things. But the demand for energy and mineral resources is ever-growing. While we argue the merits of it all, and lament the lack of alternate energy sources, we do little to curtail that demand. Fossil fuel is sort of like buying meat at the store: it's easy to forget where it comes from. Walking through the aisles of plastic that pass for consumer goods on your way to pick up those organic vegetables, most of us never consider that it took resources mined from the earth to make most of it, and it didn't arrive by horse-drawn cart. We all share the responsibility. After a hard look in the mirror, and finding the cold stare of hypocrisy looking back, I cannot reasonably object to drilling in ANWR. Alaska is dying on the vine. People are leaving, which is fine with me, but it evidences the difficulties we face. Alaskans don't want to lose their Permanent Fund dividend or pay taxes. Perhaps some don't understand those privileges come from oil and gas production.
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