A High Price for a Little Oil

We humans somehow manage to muck up even our most precious natural places. On a summer weekend, Yosemite Valley is a dusty, smoggy traffic jam of angry motorists battling for a parking space. In the white fastness of Yellowstone in winter, snowmobiles shatter the peace. The inner mysteries of the Grand Canyon are increasingly cloaked in air pollution. The sad story goes on and on. And these are the places we call our “crown jewels.”

But there is a place left that has not been spoiled, that still meets the definition of wilderness in the purest sense. It is called “America’s Serengeti” because of the variety of its wildlife, from polar bears to Dall sheep. Few people go there, but those who do are treated to one of the rare places where an entire ecosystem functions naturally, unaffected by human actions or development. The place is the 1.5-million-acre slice of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge on Alaska’s north coast known as Area 1002. This is the region, protected for 40 years, that the Bush administration wants to open to oil and gas exploration and development. Drilling and production would be allowed under Title V of the proposed Energy Security Act of 2001, to be debated on the floor of the U.S. House today or Thursday. An amendment to kill the drilling plan will be offered and should pass.

There will be debate over how much or how little oil might be found in Area 1002; about how much or how little damage might be caused by modern drilling methods, and what the oil means to American energy independence. Congress should forget all that and consider this: The minute the first bulldozer crosses into Area 1002, the North Slope plain will no longer be wilderness. It will become just another pretty tract of land despoiled by pursuit of the dollar.

Wilderness is wilderness or it is not. The Arctic preserve is unique in the richness and scope of its topography, in its birds, fish, wild rivers and marine mammals. This 5% of the Arctic slope is priceless in its wild state. Yet it would be sold for the equivalent of six months’ supply of gasoline.

Many who support drilling will argue that it doesn’t really matter because so few Americans will ever travel to the refuge. It is enough to know there is still such a place, where our children and grandchildren and their children and grandchildren might visit. Perhaps they will hear stories about how some people wanted to turn it into an oil field and wonder how anyone could have thought such a thing.