Posted on: Thursday, August 2, 2001

Editorial
Alaska wilderness: once it's gone, it's gone

It's very nearly the last of our truly unspoiled wilderness: the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Who cares? some people ask. No one goes there anyway.

That, of course, is how wilderness stays unspoiled. The 1.5 million acres of the refuge that President Bush proposes to open to oil exploration has never seen a bulldozer. Congress is being asked to open these lands — summer home for birds that winter in Hawai'i, as well as native caribou — to roads, production facilities, airstrips, ports, massive gravel mining and housing for thousands of workers.

And for what?

There's not very much oil in the refuge. Estimates by the U.S. Geological Survey find that there is only a six-month supply of economically recoverable oil.

Many proponents of drilling have pointed to recent price spikes as a reason to drill. But any oil discovered in the refuge would not be available for at least a decade. And getting this oil down to the lower 48 states will require environmentally destructive pipelines, pumping stations and sprawling industrial infrastructure.

Then the oil will be gone. And so will the wilderness.

The Alaska provision is part of an omnibus energy bill, broadly endorsed by the White House, and passed yesterday by the House.

Also yesterday, the House killed a related provision that would have raised the gas mileage of SUVs to that of the rest of America's car fleet. The gas mileage of American cars peaked at 26.5 mpg — in 1986. It's been going down ever since.

With that kind of voracious disregard for the environment, no wonder so many of us are so willing to ravage the wilderness we may never personally lay eyes on in order to get more hydrocarbons to pollute the world in which we live.