“Our culture is not up for sale”: The stakes of Trump’s push to drill in the Arctic refuge – By Rachel Ramirez (VOX) / Dec 10 2020
A majority of voters don’t support drilling in the Arctic refuge. Trump is doing it anyway.
The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, an expanse of public land in Alaska the size of South Carolina, is one of the last untouched landscapes in the world. The native Gwich’in people — who have lived in harmony with the area’s migratory Porcupine caribou herd for centuries — call the refuge’s vast coastal plain Iizhik Gwats’an Gwandaii Goodlit, or “The Sacred Place Where Life Begins.”
But in the past few years, the fate of the refuge’s roughly 19.5 million acres has become rather bleak: Its permafrost is melting rapidly, along with the rest of the Arctic region. The refuge’s coastal plain also remains at risk to oil and gas development, which companies have long had their eye on but have been barred from doing — until now.
Drilling in the US Arctic is what President Trump has longed to do, in hopes of making the US the No. 1 energy producer in the world. And in early December, the administration made a stunning, last-ditch announcement that it will auction off drilling rights in the refuge on January 6 — two weeks before President-elect Joe Biden takes office. It’s the administration’s final attempt to turn a profit on Indigenous lands with little regard for the environmental or cultural ramifications.
Oil and gas exploration in the coastal plain would not only further fuel the planet’s already warming temperatures, but it would also drive away species like the caribou as well as polar bears and bowhead whales, and severely impact the quality of water that many animals and Alaska Natives rely on.
CONTINUE > https://www.vox.com/22163821/arctic-refuge-oil-drilling-trump
