(Amy Harder of the National Journal asked a question of readers during the week of November 15, 2013, “Arctic Drilling: Promising Frontier or To Risky?” We especially appreciated the responsive and detailed comments of Alaska State Senator Cathy Giessel {NGP Photo}. Below are our observations.)
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The Administration’s Alaska Policy:
No Risk/No Reward = No Progress = Retreat From Greatness
By
Dave Harbour
Let’s face it, America’s greatness, modern might and way of life was first born in freedom, and then later nourished with the discovery and modern uses of fossil fuel. At no point in the country’s coming of age was our progress without risk or even greater reward.
By embracing risk for the reward of a greater society, we flourished. Jobs, education, technology, security and a bright future were all the product of taking risk, making some mistakes along the way, recovering, and forging ever forward.
Yet today, there seems to be a mindset in the current and some previous administrations that nothing should be undertaken if risk is involved; indeed, there is evidence that the government uses statutory and regulatory tools to stop human endeavor, not reasonably regulate the risks and rewards associated with resource development.
The current Administration’s approach to Alaska’s Arctic development is a perfect example of risk/reward avoidance at the expense of a deteriorating society.
In its obvious mission to curtail resource development in Alaska, the Administration has threatened our very confidence in the rule of law, in due process, in the equal application of justice.
We have seen this Administration:
- Seek, under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), to restrain human activity that would affect nearly 200,000 square miles of alleged polar bear habitat when bear populations are increasing
- Try to alter human activity (again, under ESA) that would affect many hundreds of square miles of Steller sea lion and beluga whale habitat when those populations are also growing
- Through the Interior Secretary, apply shallow water exploration delays on Arctic permit applications following the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico – but without advance notice or reasoning provided to Alaska’s governor, to lessees who paid billions for leases, or the public via the Federal Register. As the Secretary unilaterally – and on his own motion — applied a Gulf drilling moratorium to the Arctic without documentation, his very own Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) Director was testifying that no actual or de facto Arctic moratorium was in place
- Delay Clean Air Act permits on Arctic exploration efforts for minor reasons not applied to other ocean industries
- Use Executive Orders to create out of thin air a major “Ocean Zoning Policy” for the United States without Congressional endorsement or funding. Under the White House Council on Environmental Quality, the President has diverted congressionally authorized funds, manpower and mission capability of many agencies away from authorized work as they plead ‘poverty’ to Congress for lack of funds. Agencies include key managers of the Interior Department, Coast Guard, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), etc. This massive effort not only detracts from authorized work and wastefully depletes the Treasury; it also mortgages America’s future without congressional oversight. This is so because of the vast self-assumed mission which could massively alter human behavior in not only the seas surrounding and great lakes within America, but activities on waters and on land surrounding ponds, lakes, streams and rivers that, in turn, could be shown to affect the oceans.
- Stand blindly by as the EPA sets new, disastrous, precedent to prevent the reasonable and predictable and constitutional act of ‘due process’. Instead of waiting for a citizen to petition the EPA for a permit or permits under the Clean Water Act and other authorities, the EPA is now determining in Alaska whether a purchaser of Alaska state mineral leases – on Alaska state land — should be allowed to pursue a project even before the party has applied to the state or federal government for its first permit. This blockade of due process, if allowed to stand, relieves American citizens of their reliance on the ‘rule of law’ and signals citizens involved in every human endeavor that the federal government might of its own volition, at any time, seek to intervene and stop an activity before it has even started, before permit applications have been filed. This sort of predatory government, this ‘new America’, would very much resemble an activist environmental dictatorship.
These are a few of many more examples we could give of an overreaching, arrogant, unjust federal government that uses pious excuses of risk avoidance to delay or stop any Alaska resource development that could truly provide the country with badly needed energy security, economic and job recovery and national security. The policies of perfect protection from risk also threaten Alaska’s economic future: founded on the rewards that reasonable resource development promises.
And while our leaders seek to avoid risk and focus disproportionate human and financial resources on oil industry regulatory controls, Canada and Russia and other Polar nations are more circumspect. Looking to the future, they are working every day to expand resource and economic development in the Arctic. As they expand influence, they are determined to establish as much sovereignty over fossil fuel rich Arctic acres as they can.
To answer the original question then, we conclude that Americans are willing to accept risk for the rewards it offers but that we expect reasonable and impartial execution of the rule of law and due process as the details of Arctic and other projects are adjudicated.
This Administration’s treatment of Alaskan energy and mineral potential is truly a frontal attack on the rule of law and, indeed, on America’s way of life and the future of her children.
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