On April 5, citizens of Anchorage, Alaska, rallied together public hearings held by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) in Anchorage and Fairbanks to voice opposition to President Obama’s recently released offshore drilling plans for the Bering and Chukchi Seas. These hearings are the first in series that the BOEM is holding around the country on the future of the Arctic Ocean and Outer Continental Shelf drilling operations that could occur there.
A meeting room at an Embassy Suites hotel in downtown Anchorage served as the meeting place for the event and was sponsored by the Sierra Club. About 100 concerned and outraged citizens, some of them dressed in polar bear and walrus costumes, gathered to fight for the coastal communities and wildlife that call this area home and the present and future effects of climate change for Alaskans.
The BOEM’s manner of taking comment from attendees was also innovative, to say the least. They provided computers so people could make written comments, and experts at each computer station interacted with the public about such things as oil spill impacts and the regulatory process.
Occurring the day after a similar hearing in Fairbanks, the two events combined show the state’s unified commitment to climate justice and fighting for the frontline communities throughout the state. The Bureau’s plan covers the years 2017-2022, and tentatively includes lease sales in Cook Inlet and in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas in 2020 and 2022, with lease sales also proposed in the Gulf of Mexico.
The rallies are a result of the Obama administration plan to sell oil and gas leases off U.S. Arctic shores, despite oil companies such as Shell withdrawing their permits for drilling in the state. Furthermore, Obama announced on numerous occasions his promise to advocate that resource development would harm wildlife and coastal communities and worsen climate change.
This decision to sell oil and gas leases in the Arctic will have far-reaching consequences for years to come. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, upon the release of the 5-year plan, said “the Arctic is a unique place of critical importance to many, including Alaska Natives who rely on the ocean for subsistence. As we put together the final proposal, we want to hear from the public to help determine whether these areas are appropriate for future leasing and how we can protect environmental, cultural and subsistence resources.”
Previously, President Obama has called for transitioning off of fossil fuels, saying in the State of the Union Address: “Now we’ve got to accelerate the transition away from old, dirtier energy sources. Rather than subsidize the past, we should invest in the future…”
These sentiments are met with feelings of outrage and even betrayal from environmentalists and locals alike, citing Obama’s promise to end all offshore Arctic oil drilling this past September.
Mollie Ningeulook of Shishmaref, a primarily Inupiaq village along the Chukchi Sea, said the Sierra Club flew her to Anchorage for the event.
She said she wants no lease sales. She’s worried an oil spill could devastate populations of animals vital to native communities’ subsistence such as seals, and that oil production in the region will contribute to dangerous climate change by increasing the amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere.
“I’m worried the animals will disappear due to this climate change,” she said.
Those concerns were shared by Janet Mitchell, City Council administrator for the Native village of Kivalina. Noting that her community relies on subsistence hunting for 75 percent of its food, Mitchell said a spill could curtail local access to bearded seals, walruses, and migrating fish.
"I'm worried about our survival if there is an oil spill," she explained. "As oil development goes forward, there is always a spill."
At the rally outside the hotel, Erik Grafe, a staff attorney with Earthjustice, argued that new Arctic leases would be "incompatible with meeting the president's climate change goals. We don't want to see a doubling down on the infrastructure to get more fossil fuels out of the Arctic when we should be moving away from all fossil fuels," he said.
The BOEM’s draft environmental impact statement looks at what effects the drilling may have on local communities, infrastructure, subsistence, marine mammals, and the potential for oil spills.
Yet there is still one vital point that the document does not address.
“For example, we don’t say, ‘if this much oil is taken out of the ground, it will have this much effect on climate change,’” said Jennifer Bosyk, a marine biologist with the Bureau.
It remains a disheartening and grim error on the part of state policymakers and the political establishment overall that the issue of how these proposed drillings will affect local communities is often brushed aside.
Many agree that despite the false promises of safe practices and putting the wildlife and environment serious peril, there is no safe way to drill for oil without destroying the land and oceans.
Echoing this statement is Lois Epstein, Arctic program director for The Wilderness Society.
“There is no proven technology to recover significant amounts of spilled oil from icy, stormy seas," Epstein asserted. "A major oil spill could devastate the marine environment and sensitive coastal areas."
Alaskans are generally split on energy development in Arctic waters. Unlike the nation's East Coast states, The Last Frontier is heavily dependent on the oil and gas industry, the state's second-largest private employer. Some northern communities have also used tax money from the oil industry to fund building schools, hospitals, and other local infrastructure.
The Alaskan government has also relied on revenues from its North Slope oil fields to underwrite up to 90 percent of the state's operating budget. But with oil prices stuck at nearly $40 per barrel, that heavy reliance has caused Alaska's budget deficit to swell to a gargantuan $4.1 billion.
As a result, Alaska officials and oil industry supporters are pushing the federal government to allow new oil and gas leasing off their shores as well as in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which President Obama has placed off-limits to development.
"We admit that spills can and do happen," said Robert Martinson, who helped write the BOEM’s environmental impact statement backing the draft of the Arctic drilling plan. "There is a big question about cleaning up spills in the Arctic, and there's no easy answer."