\nrepublished here with Tom’s kind permission.<\/em><\/p>\n
——-<\/p>\n
Bear with me. I’ll get to the oil. But first you have
\nto understand where I’ve been and where you undoubtedly won’t go, but
\nShell’s drilling rigs surely will—unless someone stops them.<\/p>\n
Over the last decade, I’ve come to know Arctic Alaska about as
\nintimately as a photographer can. I’ve been there many times, starting
\nwith the 14 months I spent back in 2001-2002 crisscrossing the Arctic
\nNational Wildlife Refuge—4,000 miles in all seasons by foot, raft,
\nkayak, and snowmobile, regularly accompanied by Inupiat hunter and
\nconservationist Robert Thompson from Kaktovik, a community of about 300
\non the Arctic coast, or with Gwich’in hunters and conservationists
\nCharlie Swaney and Jimmy John from Arctic Village, a community of about
\n150 residents on the south side of the Brooks Range Mountains.<\/p>\n
In the winter of 2002, Robert and I camped for 29 days at the Canning
\n River delta along the Beaufort Sea coast to observe a polar bear den.
\nIt’s hard even to describe the world we encountered. Only four calm
\ndays out of that near-month. The rest of the time a blizzard blew
\nsteadily, its winds reaching a top speed of 65 miles per hour, while the
\n temperature hovered in the minus-40-degree range, bringing the
\nwind-chill factor down to something you’ll never hear on your local
\nweather report: around minus 110 degrees.<\/p>\n
If that’s too cold for you, believe me, it was way too cold for
\nsomeone who grew up in Kolkata, India, even if we did observe the bear
\nand her two cubs playing outside the den.<\/p>\n
During the summer months, you probably can’t imagine the difficulty I
\n had sleeping on the Alaskan Arctic tundra. The sun is up 24 hours a
\nday and a cacophony of calls from more than 180 species of birds
\nconverging there to nest and rear their young never ceases, day or
\n“night.” Those birds come from all 49 other American states and six
\ncontinents. And what they conduct in those brief months is a planetary
\ncelebration on an unimaginably epic scale, one that connects the Arctic
\nNational Wildlife Refuge to just about every other place on Earth.<\/p>\n
When you hear the clicking sound
\nof the hooves of the tens of thousands of caribou that also congregate
\non this great Arctic coastal plain to give birth to their young—some
\nnot far from where my tent was set up—you know that you are in a
\nplace that is a global resource and does not deserve to be despoiled.<\/p>\n
Millions of Americans have come to know the Arctic National Wildlife While significant numbers of Americans have indeed come to care for I came to know these near-shore coastal areas better years later and The Kasegaluk lagoon, which I spent much time documenting as a In July 2006, during a late evening walk, wildlife biologist Robert Can oil be cleaned up under Arctic ice?<\/strong><\/p>\n Unfortunately, as you’ve already guessed, I’m not here just to tell If you’ve been following the increasing ecological On March 31, standing in front of an F-18 “Green Hornet” fighter Fortunately, Shell still needs air quality permits from the On May 14, I called Robert Thompson, the current board chair of As it happened, I was there when, in August 2006, Shell’s first small Since then, Robert has been asking one simple question: If there were He’s asked it in numerous venues—at Shell’s Annual General Meeting During the question-and-answer period afterwards, Robert typically asked<\/a>: Persily responded: “I think everyone agrees that there is no good way A month after that conference, Shell paid an unprecedented $2.1 It would be an irony of sorts if the only thing that stood between The first oil rush in Arctic waters<\/strong><\/p>\n This isn’t the first time that America’s Arctic seas have been In 1848, when the first New England whaling ship arrived in Alaska, Within 50 years, an estimated 20,000 Bowhead whales had been Afterwards, the Bowhead population began to bounce back. Today, more Inupiat communities have been hunting Bowheads for more than two My first experience of a Bowhead hunt in Kaktovik was in September In 2007, with writer Peter And it’s not just whales and the communities that live off them that In 2008, the U.S. Department of Interior listed the polar All this is my way of saying that if oil drilling begins in the Don’t let Shell’s drilling ship head north<\/strong><\/p>\n With the crisis in the Gulf of Mexico ongoing, scientists are On May 5, Native Village of Point Hope and REDOIL joined 14 On May 18, Shell responded<\/a> publicly that it would employ a pre-made dome to contain any leaking There is, I’m beginning to realize, another crisis we have to face in But what about all the other aspects of life under water that we These are questions that desperately need to be asked and answered Whatever we can’t see, what we already can see on the front pages of If the remaining permits are approved for Shell in the coming weeks, President Obama and Secretary Salazar should stop this folly now. It’s important for them to listen to those who really know what’s at Related Links:<\/strong><\/p>\n Obama’s finally connecting the Gulf spill and clean energy. Champagne time?<\/a><\/p>\n The federal government needs to take command of the disaster response<\/a><\/p>\n
\nRefuge, even if at a distance, thanks to the massive media attention it
\ngot when the Bush administration indicated that one of its top energy
\npriorities was to open it up to oil and gas development. Thanks to the
\nefforts of environmental organizations, the Gwich’in Steering
\nCommittee<\/a>, and activists from around the country, George W. Bush
\nfortunately failed in his attempt to turn the refuge into an industrial
\nwasteland.<\/p>\n
\nthe Arctic Refuge, they know very little about the Alaskan Arctic Ocean
\nregions—the Chukchi Sea and the Beaufort Sea (which the refuge
\nabuts).<\/p>\n
\ndiscovered what the local Inupiats had known for millennia: these two
\nArctic seas are verdant ecological habitats for remarkable numbers of
\nmarine species, including endangered Bowhead whales and threatened polar
\n bears, Beluga whales, walruses, various kinds of seals, and numerous
\nspecies of fish and birds, not to mention the vast range of
\n“non-charismatic” marine creatures we can’t see right down to the krill —tiny shrimp-like marine invertebrates—that provide the food that
\nmakes much of this life possible.<\/p>\n
\nphotographer, along the Chukchi Sea is one of the most important coastal
\n treasures of the entire circumpolar north. It is 125 miles long and
\nonly separated from the sea by a thin stretch of barrier islands. Five
\nicy rivers drain into the lagoon, creating a nutrient-rich habitat for a
\n host of species. An estimated 4,000 Beluga whales are known to calve
\nalong its southern edge, and more than 2,000 spotted seals use the
\nbarrier islands as haul-out places in late summer, while 40,000 Black
\nBrant goose use its northern reaches as feeding grounds in fall.<\/p>\n
\nSuydam and I even spotted a couple of yellow wagtails—not imposing
\nwhales, but tiny songbirds. Still, the sight moved me. “Did you know,”
\n I told my companion, “that some of them migrate to the Arctic from my
\nhome, India?”<\/p>\n
\nyou about the glories—and extremity—of the Alaskan Arctic, which
\nhappens to be the most biologically diverse quadrant of the entire
\ncircumpolar north. I’m writing this piece because of the oil, because
\nunder all that life and beauty in the melting Arctic there’s something
\nour industrial civilization wants, something oil companies have had
\ntheir eyes on for a long time now.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\n devastation<\/a> unfolding before our collective eyes in the Gulf of
\nMexico since BP’s rented Deepwater Horizon exploratory drilling rig went
\n up in flames (and then under the waves), then you should know about—
\nand protest—Shell Oil’s plan to begin exploratory oil drilling in the
\n Beaufort and Chukchi Seas this summer.<\/p>\n
\njet and a large American flag at Andrews Air Force Base, President Obama
\n announced<\/a> a new energy proposal, which would open up vast expanses of America’s
\ncoastlines, including the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas, to oil and gas
\ndevelopment. Then, on May 13, the United States Ninth Circuit Court of
\n Appeals handed a victory<\/a> to
\nShell Oil. It rejected the claims of a group of environmental
\norganizations and Native Inupiat communities that had sued Shell and the
\n Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service (MMS) to stop
\nexploratory oil drilling in the Arctic seas.<\/p>\n
\nEnvironmental Protection Agency as well as final authorization from
\nInterior Secretary Ken Salazar before the company can send its 514-foot
\ndrilling ship, Frontier Discoverer, north this summer to drill
\nthree exploratory wells in the Chukchi Sea and two in the Beaufort Sea.
\nGiven what should by now be obvious to all about the dangers of such
\ndeep-water drilling, even in far less extreme climates, let’s hope they
\ndon’t get either the permits or the authorization.<\/p>\n
\nResisting Environmental Destruction on Indigenous Lands (REDOIL<\/a>).
\n“I’m very stressed right now,” he told me. “We’ve been watching the
\ndevelopment of BP’s oil spill in the Gulf on television. We’re praying
\nfor the animals and people there. We don’t want Shell to be drilling in
\nour Arctic waters this summer.”<\/p>\n
\n ship arrived in the Beaufort Sea. Robert’s wife Jane caught it in her
\nbinoculars from her living-room window and I photographed it as it was
\nscoping out the sea bottom in a near-shore area just outside Kaktovik.
\nIts job was to prepare the way for a larger seismic ship due later that
\nmonth.<\/p>\n
\n a Gulf-like disaster, could spilled oil in the Arctic Ocean actually be
\n cleaned up?<\/p>\n
\n in The Hague in 2008, for instance, and at the Arctic Frontiers
\nConference in Tromsø, Norway, that same year. At Tromsø, Larry Persily —then associate director of the Washington office of Alaska Governor
\nSarah Palin, and since December 2009, the federal natural gas pipeline
\ncoordinator in the Obama administration—gave a 20-minute talk on the
\nrole oil revenue plays in Alaska’s economy.<\/p>\n
\n “Can oil be cleaned up in the Arctic Ocean? And if you can’t answer
\nyes, or if it can’t be cleaned up, why are you involved in leasing this
\nland? And I’d also like to know if there are any studies on oil toxicity
\n in the Arctic Ocean, and how long will it take for oil there to break
\ndown to where it’s not harmful to our marine environment?”<\/p>\n
\n to clean up oil from a spill in broken sea ice. I have not read anyone
\ndisagreeing with that statement, so you’re correct on that. As far as
\nwhy the federal government and the state government want to lease
\noffshore, I’m not prepared to answer that. They’re not my leases, to be
\n real honest with everyone.”<\/p>\n
\nbillion<\/a> to the MMS for oil leases in the Chukchi Sea. In October<\/a> and December<\/a> 2009, MMS approved Shell’s plan to drill five exploratory wells. In the
\n permit it issued, the MMS concluded that a large spill was “too remote
\nand speculative an occurrence” to warrant analysis, even though the
\nagency acknowledged that such a spill could have devastating
\nconsequences in the Arctic Ocean’s icy waters and could be difficult to
\nclean up.<\/p>\n
\nthe Obama administration and an Arctic disaster-in-the-making was BP’s
\npresent catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico.<\/p>\n
\nexploited for oil. If you want to know more, check out John Bockstoce’s
\n book, Whales, Ice, and Men: The History of Whaling in the Western
\nArctic<\/em><\/a>. Throughout the latter part of the nineteenth century,
\ncommercial whalers regularly ventured into those seas to kill Bowhead
\nwhales for whale oil, used as illuminant in lamps and as candle wax. It
\n was also the finest lubricating oil then available for watches, clocks,
\n chronometers, and other machinery. Later, after petroleum was
\ndiscovered, whale baleen became a useful material for making women’s
\ncorsets.<\/p>\n
\nan estimated 30,000 Bowhead whales lived in those Arctic seas. Just two
\nyears later, there were 200 American whaling vessels plying those waters
\n and they had already harvested 1,700 Bowheads.<\/p>\n
\nslaughtered. By 1921, commercial whaling of Bowheads ended as whale oil
\nwas no longer needed and the worldwide population of Bowheads had, in
\nany case, declined<\/a> to about 3,000—with the very survival of the species in question.<\/p>\n
\n than 10,000 Bowheads and more than 60,000 Beluga whales migrate through
\n the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas. The Bowhead is believed to be perhaps
\nthe longest-lived
\n mammal<\/a>. It is now categorized as “endangered” under the Endangered
\n Species Act<\/a> of 1973 and receives additional protection under the Marine
\nMammal Protection Act<\/a> of 1972. It would, of course, be unforgivably
\n ironic if, having barely outlived the first Arctic oil rush, the
\nspecies were to fall victim to the second.<\/p>\n
\nmillennia for subsistence food. In recent decades, the International
\nWhaling Commission<\/a> has approved an annual quota of 67 whales for
\nnine Inupiat villages in Alaska. This subsistence harvest is deemed
\necologically sustainable and not detrimental to the recovery of the
\npopulation.<\/p>\n
\n2001. After the whale was brought ashore, everyone—from infants to
\nelders—gathered around the creature to offer a prayer to the creator,
\n and thank the whale for giving itself up to, and providing needed food
\nfor, the community. The muktuk<\/em> (whale skin and blubber) was
\nthen shared among community members in three formal celebrations over
\nthe year to come—Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Naluqatuk (a June
\nwhaling feast), two of which I attended.<\/p>\n
\n Matthiessen<\/a> I visited Point Hope and Point Lay, two Inupiat
\ncommunities of about 1,000 inhabitants on the Chukchi Sea coast. Point
\nHope is considered one of the oldest continuously inhabited settlements
\nin North America. At Point Lay, we accompanied Bill and Marie Tracey on a
\n 17-hour boat ride during a Beluga whale hunt. After the whales were
\nbeached, four generations gathered in a circle to offer prayer and
\nthanks to the whales. In other words, for such Alaskan Inupiat
\ncommunities whales are far more than food on the table. Their cultural
\nand spiritual identity is inextricably linked to the whales and the
\nsea. If Shell’s vessels head north, the question is: How long will
\nthese communities survive?<\/p>\n
\nare at stake. Oil drilling, even at a distance, has already taken a
\ntoll in the Arctic. After all, the survival of several Arctic species,
\nincluding polar bears, walruses, seals, and sea birds, is seriously
\nthreatened by the widespread melting of sea ice, the result of climate
\nchange (caused, of course, by the use of fossil fuels).<\/p>\n
\n bear<\/a> as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. In
\naddition, millions of birds use the near-shore Arctic waters, barrier
\nislands, coastal lagoons, and river deltas for nesting and rearing their
\n young in spring, and for feeding in summer before they start migrating
\nto their southern wintering grounds. When the Arctic wind blows in one
\ndirection, nutrient-rich fresh water from the rivers is pushed out into
\nthe ocean; when it blows in the other direction, saltwater from the sea
\nenters the lagoon. This mixing of fresh and saltwater creates a
\nnutrient-rich near-shore ecological habitat for birds, many species of
\nfish, and several species of seals.<\/p>\n
\nArctic seas and anything goes wrong, the nature of the disaster in the
\ncalving, nesting, and spawning grounds of so many creatures would be
\nhard to grasp.<\/p>\n
\nbeginning to worry about hurricane season. It officially begins on June
\n 1 and doesn’t officially end until November 30. Any significant
\nstorm entering the Gulf would, of course, only exacerbate the disaster,
\nmoving oil all over the place, while hindering clean-up operations. Now,
\n think about the Arctic Ocean, where blizzards and storms aren’t
\nseasonal events, but an all-year-round reality and—thanks (many
\nscientists believe) to the effects of climate change—their intensity
\nis actually on the rise. Even in summer, they can blow in at 80 miles
\nper hour, bringing any oil spill on the high seas very quickly into
\necologically rich coastal areas.<\/p>\n
\nenvironmental organizations in sending a letter<\/a> to Interior Secretary Salazar. In light of the oil spill in the Gulf
\nof Mexico, it urges him to reconsider his decision to allow Shell to
\nproceed with its drilling plan. That same week, Secretary Salazar did
\nfinally order a halt to all new offshore drilling projects and asked
\nShell to explain how it could improve its ability to prevent a spill—
\nand, if one happens, to respond to it effectively in the Arctic.<\/p>\n
\nwell and deploy chemical dispersants underwater at the source of any oil
\n leak. From what I gather, both methods have been attempted by BP in the
\n Gulf of Mexico. The dome has so far failed<\/a>,
\ndeveloping hydrates and becoming unusable before ever being placed over
\nthe leak. Scientists now believe that those toxic chemical dispersants
\nhave resulted in significant ecological
\n devastation<\/a> to coral reefs and could be dangerous to other sea
\nlife. None of this bodes well for the Arctic.<\/p>\n
\n the Gulf, the Arctic, and elsewhere: How do we talk about—and show <\/em>—what we can’t see? Yes, via video, we can see the gushing oil
\nat the source of BP’s well a mile below the surface of the water, and
\nthanks to TV and newspapers we can sometimes see (or read about)
\noil-slicked dead birds, dead sea turtles, and dead dolphins washing up
\non coastlines.<\/p>\n
\ncan’t see, that won’t simply wash up on some beach, that in terms of our
\n daily lives might as well be on Mars? What’s happening to the
\nincredible diversity of marine life inhabiting that mile-deep water, and
\n what cumulative impact will all that still-spilling oil have on it, on
\nthe ecology of the Gulf of Mexico, and possibly—in ways we may not
\nyet be able to imagine—on our lives?<\/p>\n
\nbefore we allow oil ships to head north and drilling to spread to
\nAmerica’s Arctic Ocean. Keep in mind that there, unlike in the temperate
\n and tropical oceans where things grow relatively fast, everything grows
\n very slowly. On the other hand, toxins left behind from oil spills
\nwill take far longer to break down in the frigid climate. Bad as the
\nGulf may be, a damaged Arctic will take far more time to heal.<\/p>\n
\nour newspapers and in the TV news should be more than enough to convince
\n us not to take seriously the safety claims of giant oil companies desperate
\n to drill<\/a> under some of the worst conditions imaginable. Send those
\n drill rigs into Arctic waters and, sooner or later, you know just what
\nyou’ll get.<\/p>\n
\nthe Frontier Discoverer will be in the Chukchi Sea less than
\nsix weeks later.<\/p>\n
\nstake, the environmental groups and human rights organizations of the
\nindigenous Inupiat communities. It’s time to put a stop to Shell’s
\ndrilling plan in America’s Arctic Ocean for this summer—and all the
\nsummers to come.<\/p>\n
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