Opinion piece gets it backward

To the Editor:

Tom Brennan’s opinion piece, “Bank Attack Hurt Alaska,”‘ gets it exactly backward. Efforts to prevent oil extraction in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge are not an attack on Alaska; they are a last-ditch defense of what makes our state unique and wonderful: wilderness, wildlife, and the chance to experience them or even live a subsistence lifestyle. Industry spokespersons would like us to believe (against the testimony of biologists and those Natives who still depend on caribou) that pristine wilderness and critical wildlife habitat can be developed for oil production without significant harm. Understandably, a couple of the for-profit Alaska Native corporations created by ANCSA may focus exclusively on a financial “bottom line” supported by oil revenues. However, the Native people who oppose drilling and may depend on caribou must be taken very seriously too. Even if we ignore the industry’s actual history of oil spills, pipeline leaks and other technical failures, and the fact that melting permafrost will make such failures more likely, you cannot have the drilling platforms, housing and all the associated industrial infrastructure and activity without effectively destroying crucial wildlife habitat, and transforming the area to resemble any industrial oilfield.

That is the real attack on Alaska: pushing for this, on behalf of a boom-and-bust industry that needs to be transitioned away from in any case due to climate change.

— Phil Somervell,

Palmer