ANWR: The Inconvenient Truth (Part 1)

The inconvenient truth is revealed in these winter and summer photos of ANWR’s barren, coastal plain…

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Using modern technology to explore for, and extract oil from a barren, frozen plain looks like this…

ANWR is a wildlife refuge because of politics, not because God or an infallible natural law made it so. In a 1980 law, the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA), Congress designated part of ANWR a wildlife refuge, part a wilderness area. Congress also designated the Coastal Plain, the northern-most 10% of ANWR, an oil exploration and drilling zone, which is now called the “10-02 Area,” named for the section of of ANILCA.

The Coastal Plain/10-02 area is completely flat and barren with no trees, hills, or mountains. Most of the year it’s covered with snow and ice and shows virtually no life. During the six week “summer” the coastal plain is dotted with thousands of lakes and is covered by boggy tundra on permafrost (permanently frozen ground).

The sliver of yellow at the north edge of ANWR is the Coastal Plain, or “10-02 area,” the zone that Congress set aside for oil exploration and drilling in 1980.

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