A VITALLY IMPORTANT MESSAGE: GOP Quietly Moves to Open Arctic Refuge to Oil & Gas Drilling While Earth Undergoes 6th Extinction

This is such a profoundly important and vital message that I hope will be seen and shared far and wide. ― Molly

As the GOP tax bill heads to a potential vote today, a little known provision tucked into the Republican tax bill would open one of the world’s last pristine wildernesses—the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge—to oil and fracked gas drilling. The amendment was added during negotiations to win votes for the larger tax bill. The Arctic Refuge is rich in biodiversity and home to caribou, polar bears and musk oxen. It has also been home to indigenous people for thousands of years. We speak with activist and photographer Subhankar Banerjee, Lannan Chair and professor of art and ecology at the University of New Mexico.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, Democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

The Senate could vote as early as today on a Republican tax plan that would shower billions of dollars in tax cuts on the richest Americans and corporations. Tucked into the bill are amendments adding during negotiations meant to win votes to pass the measure. One little-known provision would open one of the world’s last pristine wildernesses, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, to oil and fracked gas drilling.

The Arctic Refuge is rich in biodiversity and home to caribou, polar bears and musk oxen. Millions of migratory birds gather there from across the world, and whales reside just offshore. It has also been home to generations of indigenous people for thousands of years. This is Gwich’in Tribal Government member Samuel Alexander testifying last month during a Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources hearing.

SAMUEL ALEXANDER: When we talk about the refuge, we talk about land, it is tied to our language and our understanding of the world. And the caribou, we are connected to them and they recognize that. We talk about—I hear this talk about development all the time. “We need to develop this. We need to develop that.” What I think we need is a little bit of understanding of the sustainability of the life that we live as Gwich’in. All right? We are not asking—we’re not sitting here asking for anything. We are not saying, “We need hospitals. We need schools. We need all these things.” We are not saying, “Give us money.” What we’re saying is, “Let us live as Gwich’in.”

AMY GOODMAN: Legislation to allow drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge was quietly added to the Republican tax code bill, meaning indigenous activists and environmentalists are now on the brink of losing their decades-long political battle over the refuge. Hundreds of scholars from dozens of universities have signed a letter to Congress that reads in part, “The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge must not be auctioned off to Big Oil. Its natural values far exceed any oil that may lie beneath the coastal plain. As scholars from across the United States and Canada, we ask that you keep this cherished place and vibrant ecosystem protected for generations to come.”

Well, for more, we’re going to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where we’re joined by Subhankar Banerjee. Activist, photographer, and Lannan chair and professor of art and ecology at the University of New Mexico. His new piece for TomDispatch headlined, Drilling, Drilling, Everywhere: Will the Trump Administration Take Down the Arctic refuge?.

Subhankar Banerjee is the author of Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: Seasons of Life and Land, and editor of Arctic Voices: Resistance at the Tipping Point. An exhibition of his Arctic work, Long Environmentalism in the Near North is on display at the University of New Mexico Art Museum. Subhankar Banerjee, welcome to Democracy Now! Tell us what’s at stake, and why what’s at stake is hidden in the tax bill that could be voted on as early as today.

SUBHANKAR BANERJEE: Indeed. Amy, thank you for giving voice to the Arctic Refuge and showing the segment of Gwich’in leader Sam Alexander during the Senate testimony. What we are talking about is an epic crime about to be committed by the U.S. Congress, and we need to stop this.

And let me just preface this by saying that the most significant story on our planet right now is actually not even climate change, but the mass extinction and die-off of species with which we share this planet. Scientists are telling us that we are in the midst of the sixth extinction.

So what can we do? Of course, it is a very, very complicated issue. It’s more complicated than even climate change. But the least we should do as an ethical imperative, global ethical imperative, is to not destroy vital birthing grounds and nurseries where animals replenish their populations.

When it comes to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge where drilling is proposed, the coastal plain of the Arctic Refuge is the biologically most diverse protected nursery in the entire Circumpolar North. It is a nursery of global significance. I am not saying this sitting at a high tower of academia. I have spent an enormous amount of time in all seasons in that coastal plain, and have seen life being born, being nursed, in all seasons including winter.

That is the coastal plain where the polar bear gives birth. That is the coastal plain where muskox gives birth. That is the coastal plain where 200,000-strong Porcupine River caribou herd, that earlier Sam Alexandra was talking about, give birth and nurse their young. That is the coastal plain where millions of birds from six continents and all 50 United States go there to nest and rear their young. And I have experienced all of this personally out there.

And the most beautiful way that the Arctic Refuge coastal plain as a nursing ground has been articulated by the indigenous Gwich’in people of northeast Alaska and northwest Canada–they call it in their Gwich’in language “Iizhik Gwats’an Gwandaii Goodlit” which roughly translates to in English “the sacred place where life begins.” So to turn the sacred place where life begins into an oil field at a time of extreme global climate change–that George Monbiot calls climate breakdown—and in the midst of sixth extinction, is an epic crime.

Please continue this interview, or to watch the full program, please go here: https://www.democracynow.org/2017/12/1/gop_quietly_moves_to_open_arctic