for drilling in ANWR. More specifically, in the 1.5m acre coastal plain, the refuge’s biological heart: the birthing grounds of the Porcupine caribou herd, the prime denning area for the Beaufort Sea population of polar bears (a threatened species, numbering only 900)
The reason it’s called a “population” of polar bears is because it’s a population of them, not a species.
That’s also not a threatened number for the apex predator species in such an area.
Ten thousand years of natural beauty and balance – America’s last great wilderness – will soon be “open” to the highest bidder, beginning at $25 an acre. The winner could initiate seismic testing: shaking the earth with massive vibration trucks, awakening polar bears in their dens.
Which way are we supposed to read this? That the bears will be woken up from a nap? Oh dear.
Or, that we’ll interrupt their hibernation? But polar bears don’t hibernate……
I thought polar bears were all supposed to have died out by now anyway, according to the hysterical claims of green fruitcakes and Al Gore?
And polar bears don’t hibernate like other bears, true, but the females do den up to have their cubs.
Whenever I see weird units, I smell a rat. 1.5m acres is what? (calculator) 2,300sq miles and change. Depending on your taste, this is approximately 9/10 of a Devon or a Cumbria, 4 Greater Londons, or a combined Herefordshire Worcestershire and Warwickshire. Of which, how much will be used for drilling at any one time? Not Very Much™
I’m sure the Porcupine caribou and will still be able to find somewhere to do their thing, and the bears will find somewhere to snooze in peace (although I thought this was moot because they’d all been killed by warble gloaming)
Strange that the Guardian didn’t point out that if only the wicked UK had fracked all out, there’d be no need for this horrid desecration.
“On the other hand, the World Bank estimates that renewable energy will create three times as many jobs per-dollar-invested as oil and gas.”
So our boy will be happy with covering Gwats’an Gwandaii Goodlit with giant wind turbines then. And the berry picking, story telling natives (dressed in their traditional attire) can listen with reverence as they relocate their village to make way for hydro.
“On the other hand, the World Bank estimates that renewable energy will create three times as many jobs per-dollar-invested as oil and gas.”
Thanks. Useful to have a measure of the relative efficiency and probable cost. O&G comes out even better than I thought.
‘Ten thousand years of natural beauty and balance’
Anyone who thinks the ANWR coastal plain is beautiful has never been to the ANWR coastal plain.
‘America’s last great wilderness’
Down here in the Lower 48, we think the whole dang state is a wilderness.
There is a famous story about the Trans Alaska Pipeline, the TAP, that carries crude from Prudhoe Bay in the north of Alaska to the export terminal in the south. When it was announced it was claimed that it would devastate the caribou population and disrupt the migrations. The pipe is raised above the ground on stilts rather than buried in the permafrost, because the crude is hot and would melt things. What actually happened was that it became somewhere where the caribou clustered to mate, because they liked the warmth.
A lot of Worstalling on Guardian stories today. Low-hanging fruit?