Alaska outdoorsman, a longtime opponent of ANWR drilling, admits he can't defend that position

It's hard to believe it took more than 30 years to get Congress to approve drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska - not only because Republicans had control of Congress and the White House during the Bush years and could have done it then, but also because the arguments against it are so transparently absurd. Democrats' insistence that delicate ecosystems would be thrown out of whack by a tiny postage stamp of oil exporation on thousands of square miles of land never made any sense. People pictured unfortunate caribou getting doused with gushers of crude, but the reality is nothing like that an never has been.

Now comes Steve Meyer, a columnist for the Anchorage Daily News and a well-known Alaska outdoorsman who has always reflexively opposed drilling in the ANWR. Now that it's going to happen, Meyer takes a fresh look at the issue and admits there is really no serious reason to object:

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.

Exactly. Alaska benefits tremendously from its natural energy resources, but only if they are exploited. You can't have it both ways. You can't keep the oil in the ground and still demand all the economic rewards that come from having it in your state. There will still be plenty of safe space for wildlife to roam in the ANWR when the oil companies decide to descend on the area and start their work - which it turns out could take awhile. This seems like one of those things that people dread, often out of irrational fear, until it happens and they realize it's really not so bad after all. They were all worked up about it for nothing. The whole country was worked up about this for nothing. For decades. Good thing that's over.

Dan Calabrese——Bio and Archives

Dan Calabrese’s column is distributed by HermanCain.com, which can be found at HermanCain

Follow all of Dan’s work, including his series of Christian spiritual warfare novels, by liking his page on Facebook.