1. 08 October 2006

    698 days ago

    Inside the Endangered Arctic Refuge

    Alaska is probably top on my places to go list. Of anywhere, if I were to take off on a trip, I’d be Alaska. There’s the draw of it’s massive and almost mythical beauty and ruggedness, plus the impending fouling being forced upon it by today’s congress (none of whom are likely to have even been there to see the terrain from which they are trying to strip of it’s purity). This kind of thing just makes me sad.

    Wild northern Alaska is one of the last places on earth where a human being can kneel down and drink from a wild stream without being measurably more poisoned or polluted than before; its heart and essence is the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in the remote northeast corner of the state, the earth’s last sanctuary of the great Ice Age fauna that includes all three North American bears, gray wolves and wolverines, musk ox, moose, and, in the summer, the Porcupine River herd of caribou, 120,000 strong. Everywhere fly sandhill cranes and seabirds, myriad waterfowl and shorebirds, eagles, hawks, owls, shrikes and larks and longspurs, as well as a sprinkling of far-flung birds that migrate to the Arctic slope to breed and nest from every continent on earth. Yet we Americans, its caretakers, are still debating whether or not to destroy this precious place by turning it over to the oil industry for development.

    I feel bad for stealing so much directly from the article, but I really think that this is an issue with an extreme amount of gravity – both in terms of those pulling at it from either side and in the meaning and implications of sullying arguably the last best place on earth. So bear with me.

    Should the two chambers reconcile their differences in this congressional session, our rarest and most precious wilderness may be lost for good. Despite all the oil industry’s talk about “safe drilling” with environmental safeguards (less than credible at a time when, at corporate behest, a primitively pro-business administration is dismantling many decades’ worth of hard-won protections), mining fossil fuels from a fragile, treeless plain will permanently deface, contaminate, and gut it, while accomplishing almost nothing to offset the so-called oil crisis.

    Insert politically meaningless barb directed towards the sheer sloth, willful incompetence, politicized greed, and horrific-ness of today’s american government. It’s too easy for me. But I will say: fuck every single thing about every one of them, if not for everything they do and have done, for just the fact that this is even a debatable issue. Their mothers too.

    through a new indigenous activist organization called “Red Oil,” the Inupiat were making common cause with Indian communities all over Alaska in a desperate struggle against the disruption of habitat and the disappearance of sacred animals such as polar bears and seals, dangerous chemical contamination of their wild fish and game, and the fatal damage to their culture and their future that is already on the wind with the retreat of polar ice and the onset of global warming. Most biologists agree that the polar bear is doomed to vanish entirely in this century.

    Does anyone else think about how horrible it is that we can’t drink ground water? Unless, of course, we boil it or mix it with chemicals. What are we doing to the world, consequently ourselves?

    Our idea in June 2006 was to look at wild regions in the Petroleum Reserve that should be spared during its imminent transformation from our nation’s greatest roadless wilderness to a road-scarred, marred, gouged, and contaminated wasteland, stained by leaks and spills of petroleum and toxic drilling fluids and littered with rusted drums and pipe and gear.

    Scarred, marred, gouged, contaminated, stained, littered. Shouldn’t we all be a bit scared with that word string coming at us? I sure am.

    via Kjell Olsen698 days ago

  2. 10 May 2006

    849 days ago

    More Hot Air Over the Arctic

    Forget about Seals and Polar Bears. Even without taking the environment into account, drilling ANWR doesn’t make ONE OUNCE OF FUCKING SENSE. (à moins que vous êtes Halliburton, mais tant pis).

    via Kjell Olsen849 days ago

  3. 21 December 2005

    Mark Dayton and Norm Coleman, hear me out

    989 days ago

    A few hours after having written this: Looks like the drilling bit didn’t pass.

    I just wanted to let you know that I think it’s despicable that your fellow senator, Ted Stevens, has shown the disdain for congressional procedure and our troops fighting valiantly (in a pointless and unlawful war none the less) halfway across the world to hijack a defense appropriations bill with a provision to allow drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The scumbags in congress today disgust me. Is it not completely inappropriate to force your personal agenda (as he has done) upon an entire nation while there are phenomenally more important issues at hand?

    First thing, ANWR will provide a windfall for the multinational oil corporations, but tear up a national treasure (the eighth wonder of the world?). I don’t care how small a percentage of the full reserve will be opened to actual surface penetration by drilling apparatus, the entire area will have forever lost it’s pure, unique air.

    Second, the actual volume of oil cached within ANWR is pitifully insufficient for it to be at all worth it. I’ll admit I’m on the environmental side of the issue, but at peak production (20 years from now), the subsidy provided to the american people by the surplus oil will be just 1 penny per gallon, and that’s the most it will ever do [1]. One penny per gallon. People will be saving 10 cents per tank, and who knows if they will even need or want it? You cannot tell me it’s worth such an enormous sacrifice (once it’s opened, cut through with highways to transport oil and pumps to extract it and all the necessary infrastructure, ANWR would hardly pass muster as a national park, and will never return to it’s former state) for such a trivial [2] benefit to America and it’s people.

    I’m a freshman in college at the University of Minnesota, Morris. My family was never rich, but well off. We had three cars at times during my life. That does not mean we struggled with gas costs. There are smarter and better ways to get around. For two years, fall/winter/spring, I biked the Midtown greenway to school every day. I attended 4 years at South High. 5 miles each way, I was fitter then ever and loved it. If it was too cold I could hop on the bryant avenue bus to lake street and be at school in no time, and I’ll admit to driving myself or catching rides occasionally. The metro transit system could use improvements, but it’s just as good as driving. Also cheaper, more social, and less stressful. Biking triply so.

    Please don’t cave into Bush and (Ted) Stevens hollow agenda to repay the multinational and ethically challenged corporations that financed their election campaigns. After the death of Paul Wellstone, who was the only elected official I’ve ever genuinely trusted and looked up to, I don’t see much good at all coming from any avenue of government. That isn’t how it’s supposed to work.

    Now with talks of Bush finally being held accountable for the crimes he’s committed since becoming president [3], I’m just starting to regain the naive confidence I held in government as a kid. Please don’t let me down: do what you know is right for your constituents (not big oil, but minnesotans) and shoot down this corrupt and anti-american drilling provision. If you’re not quite sure how to do it without holding up the Defense Appropriations bill (which, as much as I’m against the Iraq war, still must go through), see the third paragraph in the blog post at the bottom of my letter [4].

    Sincerely,
    Kjell Olsen

    1. http://www.alaskaaction.org/the-penny/
    2. http://www.answers.com/trivial
    3. his impeachment, his discredit, his dishonor and shame
    3. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/flavia-colgan/arctic-refuge-in-the-bala_b_12673.html

  4. 20 December 2005

    990 days ago

    Alaska Action for ANWR - The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

    The most money that drilling the Arctic Refuge would ever save American consumers is one penny per gallon, and that would be almost 20 years from now when oil production out of the Refuge would peak.

    via Kjell Olsen990 days ago

  5. 10 December 2005

    1000 days ago

    Ideas for Creating American Jobs That Are Better Than the 735,000 Jobs Promised If Drilling Is Allowed in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

    at McSweeney’s.

    via Kjell Olsen1000 days ago

  6. 10 November 2005

    1030 days ago

    Arctic drilling dropped from House bill - Environment - MSNBC.com

    Provisions for drilling are still in the Senate’s version of the bill, but yesterday the House dropped them from theirs! If the House passes the bill today it goes into committee to reconcile differences between the two versions, where hopefully it won’t get back in.

    via Kjell Olsen1030 days ago

  7. 09 November 2005

    1031 days ago

    Arctic Refuge Series

    Photoset of the soon to be desecrated ANWR. A great eulogy.

    This is the value of this piece of wilderness

    via Kjell Olsen1031 days ago

  8. 04 November 2005

    Senate votes to begin drilling Alaskan oil

    1036 days ago

    What the fuck is wrong with my country?

    The idea of drilling in ANWR has the wisdom of an overweight diabetic eating the last 8 chocolate cake pieces at the buffet, just to succumb to his insulin shock. No offense to people who suffer from diabetes. threehundredandsixty

  9. 16 March 2005

    1269 days ago

    The New York Times > Washington > Senate Votes to Allow Arctic Drilling

    While this afternoon’s vote is not the final word on the issue, it nevertheless made drilling in the wilds of Alaska – an idea favored by the oil industry and fiercely opposed by environmental groups – far more likely than before.

    The closeness of this afternoon’s vote could be a prelude to bitter debate ahead. President Bush and many Republicans say drilling in the refuge would help make the United States less dependent on foreign sources of oil.

    Good – looks like the deal isn’t sealed, but how could we go about doing something like this to ourselves? And what is there that one can do to fight it?

    Maybe waltz on over to the senate and tell your representatives what you think – you are pissed, right?

    via Kjell Olsen1269 days ago

  10. 15 March 2005

    1270 days ago

    Profit at any cost | MetaFilter

    Stuff like this just ought to break everyones heart – but I guess it doesn’t, and looks ready to pass and become reality. Fuck.

    via Kjell Olsen1270 days ago

  11. Also somewhat recently

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