“We know that a viable future for the biosphere depends on leaving most of the known reserves of fossil fuel in the ground, so finding treacherous new locations from which to extract what activists call extreme oil, does not just tempt fate – it punches fate in the face. There is an ugly irony about extracting oil from one of the places already threatened by the effects of burning fossil fuel – where the summer ice is much reduced and temperatures are shooting up: you make the place complicit in its own destruction.”
Rebecca Solnit’s “long read” on Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the pressures it faces from the oil and gas industry, published today in is well-written, passionately partisan, and relevant to any Northerner.
