Thanks for your note, man. I agree with you, completely about the response once the impact hits home (though you forgot to point out the first step, which is batant denial). And you’re right, we DO know this stuff in advance. The information is widely available; in many cases the information actually came about through studies funded by those proposing to open the refuge to drilling - and if I can find information about the potential environmental imapct of drilling in ANWR, then I know “they” can.

IMO, the bottom line is simply this: it’d be a positive step for ourselves if we could find it within us to allow at least a couple of places to remain “off limits”, to be humble enough to say “this place is bigger than we are, and we should be able to find a way to live without turning it into a slave of ours - simply allow it to be, as it is wants to be, without imposing our will over it”.

Cheers

Carl

Thank you for your post, and your sentiments. I feel the same way, but something inside me tells me it’s only a matter of time before the Refuge is opened to drilling, unfortunately. All I can suggest is we continue to fight that, as hard as we can, for as long as we can.

Cheers

Carl

Thanks for your comment man. You nailed a big part of the issue here - ‘value’ .. we don’t count a tree as part of the GDP (and hence assign it any value) until we chop it down - If someone were to kill the cairbou, say, and sell the meat, hide, etc for money, our culture then declares the caribou herd to be of some value to the nation - otherwise we declare the place empty, barren, a wasteland, valueless. We submit that the caribou herd has no value - which is really a form of insanity.

Cheers

Carl