Posted on 12/03/2018 1:40:01 PM PST by reaganaut1
FAIRBANKS, Alaska It is the last great stretch of nothingness in the United States, a vast landscape of mosses, sedges and shrubs that is home to migrating caribou and the winter dens of polar bears.
Aside from a Native village at its northern tip, civilization has not dented its 19 million acres, an area the size of South Carolina. There are no roads and no visitors beyond the occasional hunter and backpacker.
But the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge a federally protected place of austere beauty that during a recent flyover was painted white by heavy snowfall is on the cusp of major change.
The biggest untapped onshore trove of oil in North America is believed to lie beneath the refuges coastal plain along the Beaufort Sea. For more than a generation, opposition to drilling has left the refuge largely unscathed, but now the Trump administration, working with Republicans in Congress and an influential and wealthy Alaska Native corporation, is clearing the way for oil exploration along the coast.
Decades of protections are unwinding with extraordinary speed as Republicans move to lock in drilling opportunities before the 2020 presidential election, according to interviews with over three dozen people and a review of internal government deliberations and federal documents.
To that end, the Trump administration is on pace to finish an environmental impact assessment in half the usual time. An even shorter evaluation of the consequences of seismic testing is nearing completion. Within months, trucks weighing up to 90,000 pounds could be conducting the tests across the tundra as they try to pinpoint oil reserves.
While actual oil production would be a decade or more away, the turnaround represents a prized breakthrough in the Trump administrations campaign to exploit fossil fuels and erase restrictive policies protecting the environment
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
How would they know with their head so firmly implanted?
OH NO!!!!!!!!!!
We cant destroy the ‘PRISTINE’ Alaska!!!
Not even 0.001% of it (for $billions in natural resources)
BECAUSE IT LOOKS SO PRETTY
You scared me there for a minute :)
Cue the alarms and hair pulling and gnashing of teeth.
Alaska is forever ruined.
Just like Texas it will be a wasteland /s
I’m sure PLENTY of protective laws are put in place already.
Alaska Ping.
Drill, baby, drill!
In the Blink of the NYTimes Eye, a Hunt for Oil Threatens Pristine Alaska
Fixed it.
Question, and this is a serious question, not just joking around:
How much environmental damage was done by the Alaska pipeline, the one built in the late ‘60s into the ‘70s? As I recall many environment safeguards were built into the construction and operations of that pipeline.
Wouldn’t the same environmental protection be part of any new oil drilling in Alaska?
How can they say Alaska faces all this environment danger, when the pipeline was designed to minimize impacts to the environment?
The old gray whore is a perpetual pain in the ass. She should be more interested in the failings at home, in her own back yard.
ANWR in the summer is beautiful, if you like mosquitoes and no-see-ums in huge numbers.
Anyone shocked to read this crap? If so, go stand in the corner with a Dunce Cap on.
Wait for the stories of the great benefits of the virgin tundra.
I think the only word these extremists know is the word “pristine.”
Like none. 800 miles of this:
What about the Penguins....
NY Times. Leftist elite turds. Shut up! Alaskans by and large want JOBS! Sure, the natives themselves are split about it, but those native tribes that like jobs, are extremely well off compared to the regressive tribes.
The biggest concern voiced by the Enviro-Nazis was over restricting the breeding grounds of the Caribou.
Wrong as usual, the Caribou are multiplying like never before since the pipelines provide warmth and cover.
Next article should be “Caribou population explosion endangers ....”
OMG! Thirty six people were interviewed! OMG!
Trucks weighing 90,000 pounds, kind of like the
18 wheeler’s you see on the roads every day! OMG!
OMG! 19,000,000 acres and a couple of thousand might
be constructed on! Oh NOE!!!
Drill Baby Drill!
Aren’t Penguins denizens of the South Pole?
Warmth and cover? More reason to have sex?
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