Hello friends, it's the Environment Show and welcome.
Though the recent Persian Gulf War is over, lessons on energy security linger and have
become central to a political debate over the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
We'll hear from one group advocating for energy independence by tapping oil reserves in
that area.
Also this time, a Lask and Filmmaker Glendon Brunk tells us first hand about the refuge
and about what he feels about oil exploration in that area.
The sad side of this, and another unfortunate thing, and really kind of a mean thing in
a way as it's the oil industry has been so clever at covering enough, so clever at promoting
their own policies and their own needs and their own greed, if I may use the word, to
get what they want.
The American public is not being properly educated about what's happening.
The Environment Show is a national production made possible by the J.M. Kaplan Fund of New
York, and this is Bruce Robertson.
The U.S. Department of Interior estimates that up to 9.2 billion barrels of recoverable
oil may lie beneath the tundra of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in northeastern Alaska.
If confirmed, this would rank one of the top eight oil producing fields in the world.
The question is, do we invest in our economy at home or do we invest in an economy abroad?
Those supplies come from the Middle East.
The Middle East is a very volatile area.
We have seen that.
We saw it in the 70s.
We saw it again last year, and we certainly don't want to see it again.
Isabel Tapia, Executive Director of the Coalition for American Energy Security, the Washington
DC based organization, represents 56 organizations pressing for exploration and drilling of oil
in the refuge.
As their name implies, the group advocates for American energy independence.
Tapia says the most technologically and economically feasible means to this end right now is to draw
off the oil in the Arctic refuge.
However, in addition to disputing the size of the oil field, environmental scientists
also say the refuge represents some of the finest examples of northern forests, glaciers,
and frozen tundra in North America.
Says Lisa Spear, a senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council, the landscape
in the refuge would not survive massive oil drilling operations.
Our position within the environmental community is that there are many other ways to help us
improve our energy security that are more effective over the long term than the sort of
drain America first approach that is currently being advocated by the administration as well
as the bill that was introduced by Senator Johnston.
Senator Bennett Johnston, a Democrat from Louisiana, is chairman of the Senate Energy Committee,
which reported out of committee on February 5th, the National Energy Security Act of 1991.
Now filed as S-341.
It is very similar to the National Energy Strategy announced also earlier this winter by President
Bush.
Title IX of the Senate bill specifically calls for opening the refuge to oil exploration.
Located on the northeast coast of Alaska, the refuge came about as part of the Alaska National
Interest Lands Conservation Act, wherein Congress set aside over 100 million acres of
state land as parks, refuge, and designated wilderness.
Within this allotment is the 19 million acre on-war or Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Most of the refuge is designated wilderness, receiving special protection.
However, the coastal plain, about 1.5 million acres of the refuge along the coast of the
Beaufort Sea, is not protected.
It is this area, says Isabel Tapia, that could receive congressional approval for oil and
gas exploration.
Of that 1.5 million acres, roughly about 12,000 acres would be utilized for actually
exploration and discovery and production facilities.
That 12,000 acres would be approximately the size of Dallas International Airport in Washington,
DC, or metropolitan airport.
Though 12,000 acres, or roughly 19 square miles, is a relatively small area of the entire
refuge, spear, with the Natural Resources Defense Council since 1983, researching the environmental
effects of oil and gas development, says any amount of disturbance would cause irrevocable
and deep trauma to this fragile ecosystem.
19 square miles represents the total area affected if it were all compressed into one
particular zone.
Unfortunately, oil development is strewn out over a wide area.
For example, in Prudobae, which lies about 60 miles to the west of the Arctic refuge,
we see oil development with roads and pads and pipelines that sprawl now over 800 square
miles of the Arctic coast, so that I think it's somewhat misleading for the industry to
characterize its anticipated development as covering only 19 square miles.
That may be true in some total, but the reality of how oil development takes place is that
it tends to extend and sprawl over a large area.
Adding to their argument for sort of benign involvement there, they claim that caribou
herd and other waterfowl populations have actually increased in the time that operations
have been going on along the north slope.
There's an implication that somehow the presence of human activity has been beneficial to the
different wildlife populations there.
I'm wondering what your actual assessment of this would be.
Well, the development of oil at Prudobae has converted what was once the largest wilderness
area in the United States into what is now one of the largest industrial facilities in
the entire world.
In the process, some 1,500 miles of roads and pipelines and thousands of acres of industrial
facilities now cover over 100 square miles of the Arctic coast.
Now those facilities produce a tremendous amount of waste and other environmental impacts.
For example, oil facilities on the north slope annually pump tens of thousands of tons
of air pollutants into the Arctic environment.
We have very little idea of what the impact of those air pollutants are on the fragile species
of the Arctic.
In addition, tens of thousands of gallons of crude oil, diesel, and toxic chemicals are
spilled each year on the north slope according to records kept by the State Department of
Environmental Conservation.
Hundreds of open waste pits scar the landscape.
They contain each.
Millions of gallons of oil industry waste.
Thousands of acres of wildlife habitat have been destroyed and thousands more have been
significantly impaired according to state and federal resource agencies.
So similar types of impacts we would anticipate would occur in the Arctic refuge should Congress
decide to allow oil development there.
Nevertheless, despite the pollution and disruption of the ecology, oil industry experts say wildlife
populations in the region of the north slope have increased with caribou herds there up
from 3,01970 to 18,01990.
What is more, Tapia says, we have learned a lot about Arctic ecology since oil began flowing
from the north slope in 1976.
I have been there myself.
I have been there several times and I have seen the improvement in the technology.
When we look at what happened in Prudobay in 1976, there were larger spaces that were
used for the facilities and the equipment that was required.
At that point they used gravel roads.
Today's technology does not require gravel roads.
They look basically at when they begin the exploration process at ice roads.
Ice roads mean they can only be done in the harshest climate in the winter time.
It is the only process that is approved by the permitting processes of the Department
of Interior.
And that is the form that is used to go into the exploration process.
Those ice roads then melt in the springtime and the industry is not allowed to go into
the area during the caribou calving time or during the richest part of the summer months
for the wildlife.
It is only when the harsh winter months return that the industry can then go back to working.
At the NRDC, Lisa Spear disputes this plan.
As I understand that the companies have proposed using ice roads only during the exploratory
phase and that if oil were developed there, there would need to be a major infrastructure
that involved permanent roads much like there are in Prudobay and elsewhere.
I don't believe that it is feasible for the industry to have full scale production in
the refuge using simply ice roads and I don't think they're claiming that.
So while ice roads may be feasible during the exploration phase, once you did move into
the production phase, if again oil were found and if the quantities of oil that the Department
projects within the refuge are in fact there and are developed, a massive infrastructure
along the same lines as is currently in Prudobay will be required.
And in fact the Office of Technology Assessment has projected that the area that could be affected
within the refuge if a number of fields were developed could equal or exceed the amount
of area that has been affected in the rest of the North Slope in the Prudobay area.
Isabel Tapia of the Coalition for Energy Security says we need to reduce our foreign oil imports.
With the 17,000 barrels of oil consumed each day in the United States, 25% come from Alaska,
another 25 from other sites in the U.S., including the Texas oil fields and the rest 50% from foreign locations.
When we look at this new resource in Alaska, we're talking about replacing existing fields.
It's not that we're adding on to what this country is already using.
We're looking at maintaining the status quo to keep it just the way we are now.
Prudobay is expected to be depleted by the year 2000.
That's in nine years.
If we do not have a supply to replace that, then we will in order to maintain the way we are today
we'll have to find that replacement from other fields.
And that means that we'll be looking to foreign supplies for that.
We would be investing in a foreign economy as opposed to investing in an American economy.
Again, Lisa Spear.
I think if you think of the nation's oil consumption as a leaky bucket,
that's very inefficient and we use a lot more oil than we really need to to fuel our economy.
And using the leaky bucket analogy, the solution is either to pour more oil into the top of the bucket
or to plug up the holes.
And our approach is to plug up the holes.
You can reduce imports of oil by either producing more domestically or using less domestically.
Again, the problem with producing more domestically is that it just hastens the day when the nation runs out of oil.
Wouldn't it be better to husband our own oil resources for the days when we truly need it?
And instead concentrate on tightening up the efficiency with which we use energy in this country.
As congressional debate begins to zero in on specific issues for a national energy plan,
more and more attention is going to be given to the issues you heard here today.
President Bush has said he will veto any legislation that does not contain provisions for oil development on the coastal plain.
Attempts to reach a compromise to balance drilling with conservation measures so far have not been successful.
This is Bruce Robertson.
How often is it we offer opinions on something about which we know very little?
For example, consider the wilderness tundra of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge on the northeast coast of Alaska.
Many of us environmentalist politicians and industrial leaders have formed an opinion on what we as a nation ought to do regarding the suspected oil reserves,
lying beneath the largely frozen tundra there.
Yet far fewer have ever seen photographs or even visited the region to see for ourselves just what is there.
Well joining us now is Glendon Brunk, a noted Alaskan filmmaker, lecturer and woodsman.
Glendon, you have photographed and observed the refuge for a long period now.
You say you've watched some changes coming over the land.
Let us close our eyes now as you tell us just what you have seen.
Well, I could start it out by saying for those people who saw dances with wolves at movie and that feel of the planes and the intensity of that place
in the sense of freedom and just kind of primal state.
I've been all over the world looking at wilderness areas.
It's really been my love my whole life and the Arctic Refuge, the Arctic Coastal Plan is the only place I've ever been where I can get that feel.
It is an amazing place.
It's amazing because it's totally unspoiled, it's pristine.
It's exactly the way that it was made.
And all of the wild life is there.
All the major species, major Arctic species are there in numbers.
So, I mean, you can walk out into the plane in July when the caribou are migrating through there and you can see thousands and thousands of caribou as far as you can see.
You've got all the predators that are accompanied at herd wolves, grizzly bears, wolverines.
There's polar bears offshore.
It's just an amazingly prolific environment and it's one of a kind.
There's no other place in the Arctic that has the abundance of wildlife and has the pristine quality.
And the geographical beauty that the Arctic Refuge has is no accident that it was set aside as a refuge back in the 60s.
When you look at Alaska and what's happened to Alaska in the last 20 years, it's very sad to me.
I feel whenever I think of it, I feel an immense sadness in my heart because we have taken really the last best place in North America.
I mean, hands down. And we're rapidly industrializing it and we're rapidly trading it off for a very short-term economic gain.
And the Arctic, where I walked areas in Prudob area 20 years ago and there was no development and not a look at it now.
We have the largest single and contiguous industrial zone on the face of the planet in the Prudobay, Kapari, oil fields.
It's in a massive industrialization.
And you have with that all of the accompanying pollution problems that happen in oil fields everywhere.
You have air pollution, you have groundwater pollution, you have toxic waste problems, solid waste problems.
It just goes on and on. And because of the very fragile ecosystem that the Arctic is, those problems are magnified relative to say Louisiana,
which they're bad enough. They're very magnified in the Arctic.
The sad side of this, another unfortunate thing. And it's really kind of a mean thing in a way as the oil industry has been so clever at covering it up,
so clever at promoting their own policies and their own needs and their own greed, if I may use the word, to get what they want.
The American public is not being properly educated about what's happening.
I was going to ask you though, it's one thing to point the finger at any of the oil companies for the activity that they have specifically done on location.
But is the fault and the blame really beyond even the oil companies and more squarely on the shoulders of the American public for either knowing it and condoning it or for not knowing it and condoning it?
It's squarely on our shoulders. I mean, we tend in the environmental business to slip into the good guys, bad guys, scenarios. And we're all bad guys.
It gets right down to it. We're the people consuming. I'm an environmentalist. I drive a truck around, I fly in airplanes.
I like to say it's kind of a homeopathic remedy though. I take a little bit of the poison to try to get rid of it.
But we have, as Americans, we're the world's leading consumers. We're the world's leading addicts when it comes to energy and particularly petroleum.
And nobody wants to hear that the status quo that we're really locked into has to change.
It's not a question of, you know, if we develop in the Arctic, we won't have to fight wars in the mid-east. It's not an either or scenario.
It is, if we begin to do what we really need to do, which is conserve and develop alternatives, we're not going to have to fight wars in the mid-east.
And we're not going to have to drill in the Arctic. We can do it without either. And it's not a matter of, when we talk about a simpler lifestyle, we're not talking about poverty.
We're talking about a better lifestyle, a less complicated, less expensive lifestyle. We're talking about less expensive, not only in terms of dollars and cents, but in terms of the health that we pay every day for living in the Arctic.
And we're going to have to be in a polluted environment from the immense amount of fossil fuel that we burn and pump into our atmosphere.
You've been on the road now for what about two years with your lecture tour. What have you been hearing from us from the American public?
People's reaction are, I think one of the things that disturbs me the most is, I'll go with the negative first and then finish with a positive.
And the kind of inevitability that people feel. Like it's inevitable, we're going to lose the planet.
And species are going to become extinct and my neighborhood is going to go to hell.
And it's just people have kind of given up. But at the same time, there are other people who are really digging deep.
And they're looking at their own lives. They're really trying to make a difference.
And I'm always encouraged by the incredible creativity and the energy of certain individuals around the country and they're everywhere.
And they're not the points of light that George Bush was talking about, but I think they're the real points of light.
That has really kept me going. In my own work, I really see the, personally, the need to get out of the kind of adversarial issues work that I've been in.
And I'm more and more going to go to educational work and to try to incorporate spiritual values into it.
As I really think, the changes that need to be made are in the heart, not so much in the head.
Glendon Brunk, photographer and animal behaviorist, speaking to us about impressions of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. This is Bruce Robertson.
As the National Park Service marks its 75th anniversary, Rangers, throughout the 357 National Parks, still rely on skills of the past.
But a host of new problems challenged today's park rangers from air pollution and environmental threats to rapidly increasing numbers of visitors.
In Yellowstone, the nation's oldest park, Rangers perform a vital role. Chuck Christensen has more.
Welcome to Yellowstone. You're entering the world's first National Park. At the entrance station, you'll find information.
Yellowstone is one of the world's natural wonders nestled in the Rocky Mountains. It's a geothermal wonderland home to abundant big-game animals, hot springs and geysers.
The world's first National Park, Yellowstone was founded in 1872, 44 years before the National Park Service.
The U.S. Army managed Yellowstone until 1916, as Park historian Tom Tankersley explains.
Initially, one troop came into the park in August of 1886, about 35 men.
They set up a camp just at the foot of the Mammoth Hot Springs. They weren't sure as to how long they were going to stay in the park.
They really weren't sure as to what their full objectives were.
But it didn't take long for one of those park objectives to become apparent.
There were three fires in the park when they arrived and that was the first thing they set out to do is put out these fires.
And so he had an instant management process that became institutionalized from that point on in forest fires were fought in the park.
From these beginnings, Yellowstone Park management and the National Park Service evolved.
This was one of the first ranger stations anywhere in the park service. The idea was to have a building where people could come in and get information.
In 1916, when the park service was created, 22 men recorded for duty. Yellowstone ranger John Lonsbury.
It was the cavalry that took care of Yellowstone. 16 of them stayed on in the civilian administration and became the first rangers as we know them today here in Yellowstone.
Then they continued on and they taught the next generation and the next generation down to where I'm one of the old timers teaching the young kids now this ranger business.
Today, 300 permanent employees manage an area as big as Rhode Island and Delaware combined.
A wilderness visited by over 2.6 million people annually. Like any line of work, that of the park ranger has been changed by modern technology.
But according to park ranger, Lonsbury some duties haven't.
I have rangers that still pack into the backcountry with a horse and the old spend the summer back there and they still follow tracks and cut logs off the trail and do those kind of old traditional ranger skills that hasn't changed very much in the 75 years.
Or actually the 100 plus years since Yellowstone was formed.
Lonsbury believes management of Yellowstone will continue to change in both objective and style.
But hopes when the park service celebrates its 150th anniversary, some things will still be the same.
I hope they're still placed for ranger that knows how to pack a mule and get on this horse and cover the backcountry and do some of these old fashioned skills, work with an axe and take care of themself back there no matter what the weather is.
Be self reliant. I'm hoping places like Yellowstone be little islands where some of those skills will still be taught and that the park ranger will be the ones that can still do it.
For the High Plains News Service, I'm Chuck Christensen.
The High Plains News Service is a production of the Western Organization of Resource Councils based in Billings, Montana.
And that's our show for this week. We hope you enjoyed this edition of the Environment Show.
If you know something happening in your area that you think we ought to know about or if you have a question about this week's or any week's Environment Show, feel free to drop us a line,
address your questions and comments to the Environment Show.
WAMC 318 Central Avenue in Albany, New York and the Zip Code is 1-2-2-0-6. For a cassette copy of this program call 1-800-767-1929.
That's 1-800-767-1929.
Well, the Environment Show is a program about the environment, the air, water, soil, wildlife and people of our common habitat.
The Environment Show is a presentation of national productions which is solely responsible for its contents.
Dr. Alan Shartuck, Executive Producer, and this is Bruce Robertson. The Environment Show is made possible by the J.M. Kaplan Fund of New York.
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