Yesterday, we had the pleasure of speaking to the Minnesota Book Publisher’s Roundtable. Even though we were running late and trying to duck the falling ceiling timbers, we managed to make it to our appointment, where we met old friends and made some new ones.
One friend mentioned to us that the Pioneer Press had last weekend published an item on polar explorer Will Steger, a man who is near and dear to our hearts after his very generous gifts to The Rake. We’d actually been thinking about Steger on the way over to St. Paul, as we heard reports from Ann Bancroft and Liv Arnesen, who are presently trekking across the Arctic again.
On top of all that, we had a terrible desire to get an early start on St. Patrick’s Day tippling—our generally high spirits had been deflated by the unbelievably depressing news that our elected officials in the UNited States Senate had voted narrowly to allow oil drilling in the Arcitic National Wildlife Refuge. (Steger and Senator Mark Dayton have travelled together to ANWR; few people understand better than these gents that fragile polar environments are the best barometers we have for the health of the entire globe. What we are already doing to these wildernesses, at a great distance, is itself criminal, and now we’re going to simply rejoin chickens and eggs.) So let’s be clear about this: Effectively the vote of ONE PERSON, in the entire United States, has resulted in a razor-thin majority to allow a complete reversal of a longstanding trust—resulting in the permanent desecration of national property for the short-term profiteering of the oil industry and a handful of belligerent Alaskans. (The vote was 51 to 49.) President Bush, ever the master of simple and moving, if reductionist , slogans had this to say about the momentous decision:”This will help us get some more oil reserves on the books.”
We are still almost too angry to see straight, but we need to vent on a few issues here. First, thank you very much to Senator Norm Coleman who “kept a campaign promise” and was one of seven Republicans to vote against opening ANWR. Second, shame on Hawaii Democrats Ionouye and Akaka. We’d very much like to know how these fine gentlemen—normally a real credit to their state, their country, their people, and their party—justify their vote. Is there some special caucus for states that are not a part of the contiguous “lower forty-eight” that would compell them to side with the money-grabbing, self-serving, screw-you-me-first, nevermind-the- grandchildren-I-want-mine, God-gave-us-oil-to-make-us-rich Republicans of Alaska?
We note that Senator Akaka, in particular, sits on the Senate’s Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. His website describes his seat there in the following way:
“This post serves the Senator’s longstanding commitments to safeguard our precious natural resources.”
Perhaps he could tell the Plain People of America how voting to open ANWR to oil drilling comports with this statement.
And we can’t help wondering what would happen to Hawaii’s lei industry if the Big Island were surrounded by oil rigs, and its volcanoes porcupined with geo-thermal taps.
UPDATE: We poked around in the Hawaii newspapers, and learned that the good senators from Hawaii chose to frame this issue as one of native (indigenous peoples’) rights. Apparently, there are a number or local inuit tribes that strongly favor oil drilling. (Well, duh. “Think of the money! We’ll be rich, rich, RICH!—cough, cough.”) So we have the very bizarre phenomenon of a tyranny of the (razor thin) majority passing a law that certain Democrats justify in their minds by framing as an issue of minority rights– in other words, all Americans must now agree to allow their property–their legacy–to be turned over to the profit of a very few, whether they be Inuit or Exxon.
Leave a Reply