[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 9 (Wednesday, February 2, 2005)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E159-E160]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




       INTRODUCTION OF THE UDALL-EISENHOWER ARCTIC WILDERNESS ACT

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. EDWARD J. MARKEY

                            of massachusetts

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, February 2, 2005

  Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, today I am introducing, with Representative 
Nancy Johnson and over 100 of my colleagues, legislation that would 
permanently protect the Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife 
Refuge from development by granting it full wilderness status, 
consistent with the rest of the Refuge. The Udall-Eisenhower Arctic 
Wilderness Act of 2005 honors two great visionaries by protecting, in 
their name, this extraordinary piece of America's wilderness. 
Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower began the bipartisan legacy 
to protect this majestic land when he set aside the core of the Refuge 
in 1960. Twenty years later, in 1980, Democratic Representative Morris 
Udall succeeded in doubling the size of the Refuge, thereby protecting 
even more of this pristine wilderness from oil drilling. As Mo Udall 
said at the time, ``In our lifetime, we have few opportunities to shape 
the very Earth on which our descendants will live their lives. In each 
generation, we have carved up more and more of our once-great natural 
heritage. There ought to be a few places left in the world the way the 
Almighty made them.''
  President Eisenhower and Mo Udall had the vision to protect a remote 
but very special piece of wilderness for America's future generations. 
It is now our responsibility to stop those who would tear down this 
legacy. This legislation would, at long last, complete the job they 
began.
  The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is a national treasure. It is a 
Federal land given legal protection so that the pressures of 
development today do not over-run the need to preserve for tomorrow a 
unique place for the undisturbed enjoyment of future generations. The 
Arctic Refuge does not belong to the oil companies; it does not belong 
to one party; it does not belong to one State. It is a public 
wilderness trust, and we are the trustees.
  The coastal plain of the Refuge is the biological heart of the 
ecosystem and is critical to the survival of caribou, polar bears, and 
over 160 species of birds. A Department of the Interior study suggests 
that oil development would contribute to a 20-40 percent decline in the 
Refuge's caribou population, and similar declines in wolverine and musk 
oxen populations. When you drill in the heart, every other part of the 
biological system suffers.
  The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service calls the coastal plain the 
``center for wildlife activity'' in the Refuge. lf the drillers get 
their way, a refuge for wildlife will become something else--a place 
for caribou, grizzlies, polar bears and wolves to practice their social 
skills with oil riggers, pipelines, roads, pumping stations, 
bulldozers, helicopters, airstrips, and everything else necessary for a 
state-of-the-art ``environmentally-conscious'' oil field. Like their 
counterparts in the zoo, the wildlife will be required to adapt to 
living in an oil field, and they will be ``wildlife'' no more. A place 
that has been ``forever wild'' will be gone--gone forever--never to be 
retrieved.
  If Congress authorizes drilling in the Refuge, it will scar an 
untouched landscape, evict wildlife from its traditional habitats, turn 
tundra potholes for ducks into catch basins for drilling wastes, and 
provide a precedent to invade every other wildlife refuge in the United 
States of America.
  Let's be clear--if we want to be able to protect the wildlife refuge 
system later, we must protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge now.
  You have surely heard the argument that we have no choice, that we 
have soldiers in the oil fields of the Middle East that need to come 
home, that we must reduce our dependence on oil from unstable foreign 
suppliers.
  Let's be clear again--we have a choice, a better choice, and the 
sooner we steer the debate away from drilling for 6 months' worth of 
oil in the Arctic Refuge, the sooner we can actually do something real 
about oil imports.
  The United States consumes 25 percent of the world's oil but controls 
only 3 percent of the world's reserves. 76 percent of those reserves 
are controlled by the OPEC cartel; that is our weakness. Our strength 
lies not in sacrificing our wildlands; our strength lies in harnessing 
our technological genius. We are a technological superpower. It is time 
to start acting like one.
  From an energy standpoint, drilling in the wildlife refuge is 
completely unnecessary. Transportation--cars, SUVs, and trucks--account 
for approximately three-quarters of all U.S. oil consumption. If we 
improve the average fuel economy of cars, mini-vans, and SUVs by just 3 
miles per gallon, we save more oil within ten years than would ever be 
produced from drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. 
Technology already exists that will allow us to dramatically increase 
fuel economy, not just by 3 mpg, but by 15 mpg or more--five times the 
amount the industry could possibly drill out of the Refuge.
  The debate over drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is 
surreal when you consider that the country which is sending our young 
men and women abroad to shed their blood in the Middle East oilfields 
is the same country which subsidizes the consumption of oil at home as 
if it were an infinite resource.
  Let me cite just one obscene example. The Administration's current 
energy policy provides $35,000 in tax deductions for the purchase of a 
Hummer, but a mere $2,000 for the purchase of a hybrid vehicle. A 
hybrid gets 50 miles per gallon, a Hummer gets 10 miles per

[[Page E160]]

gallon. Do the math. Oil is not infinite, but our capacity to subsidize 
the waste of oil seems boundless. The Administration's energy policy is 
like a hamster spinning in his wheel--lots of activity, no progress. 
According to the Administration's own Energy Information 
Administration, passage of the Energy Act will result in our dependence 
on foreign oil soaring from less than 65 percent today to 80 percent in 
2025.
  The public understands that. In a recent Zogby poll, Americans 
soundly rejected the link between drilling in the wildlife refuge and 
energy independence. Only one in six respondents agreed that more 
domestic oil drilling is the way to reduce our foreign oil dependence. 
More than two-thirds believe the United States should promote increased 
fuel economy and alternative energies instead of drilling. Americans 
have also made it clear to Congress that they disagree with attempts to 
make an end run around the legislative process by cramming the fate of 
the Arctic Refuge into the 2005 Budget resolution. The people of 
America recently expressed their disapproval of this ``backdoor 
maneuver'' by a margin of 59 to 25 percent.

  Even the oil companies have publicly announced that they are shifting 
their focus away from the Arctic Refuge and toward fields in other 
parts of the North Slope of Alaska; so should Congress. BP, 
ConocoPhillips and ChevronTexaco have all quietly walked away from this 
political drilling frenzy, suggesting that there are higher priorities 
for the oil industry than drilling in this refuge. Is it possible that 
oil companies know something that the politicians do not?
  If we allow this Congress to turn the Coastal Plain of the Arctic 
Refuge into an industrial footprint, the impact on the land and the 
wildlife would be permanent and the hoped-for energy benefit only 
temporary. Let us join the American people in saying, unequivocally, 
that there are places that are so rare, so special, so unique that we 
simply will not drill there as long as alternatives exist.
  We have an opportunity to preserve the Arctic Refuge as the 
magnificent wilderness the way God made it. It is arrogant and immoral 
to sacrifice this ecological gem when we have better ways to meet our 
energy needs, and no other place with such environmental significance 
on Earth. We do not dam Yosemite Valley for hydropower. We do not 
strip-mine Yellowstone for coal. And we should not drill for oil and 
gas in the Arctic Refuge.

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