URL: https://www.indianz.com/News/archives/001358.asp

Wednesday, September 10, 2003

"It is true that oil drilling would not ravage the entire [Arctic National Wildlife R]efuge. Only the coastal plain, 7 percent of the total area, would be open to drilling. The coastal plain is endless brown tundra, speckled with ponds and lakes, boggy and squishy to hike in. It is by far the least scenic part of the refuge, and if one has to drill somewhere in the area, this is the place to do it.

It's also only fair to give special weight to the views of the only people who live in the coastal plain: the Inupiat Eskimos, who overwhelmingly favor drilling (they are poor now, and oil could make them millionaires). One of the Eskimos, Bert Akootchook, angrily told me that if environmentalists were so anxious about the Arctic, they should come here and clean up the petroleum that naturally seeps to the surface of the tundra."

Get the Story:
Nicholas Kristof: Casting a Cold Eye on Arctic Oil (The New York Times 9/10)
Username: indianzcom, Password: indianzcom

Related Stories:
Kristof: To drill or not to drill? Answer the question (09/05)
Kristof: My week in the Arctic National Wildife Refuge (9/2)

All stories in the Indianz.Com Archive are available for publishing under a Creative Commons License: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)