Jared Huffman: “With great respect to the senior legislator from Alaska, I have no doubt that he knows and understands the coastal plain…”

“With great respect to the senior legislator from Alaska, I have no doubt that he knows and understands the coastal plain and that area far better than I do and that anyone else in this body does, but I do know this: every Member of this body-- in fact, every American--has a stake in protecting the coastal plain of the Arctic wilderness. Migratory birds from the coastal plain go to all 49 of the other States. We are connected, whether we know it or not, with this critical, vital ecosystem in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge. The whole point of wilderness is to protect areas that we actually may never camp out in, that we may never see, but that are, nevertheless, of such great intrinsic value that they deserve this special protection. That is what this is all about. As to the argument that we need lots of new oil extraction and development in the Arctic, I would just point out that right next door to the Arctic Refuge is an enormous, essentially equal-sized area that we set aside for that purpose. It is called the National Petroleum Reserve. The oil industry has not seen fit to develop in that area, nor does it look like they will any time soon, with oil hovering around $30 a barrel and this week the Saudis saying they may be taking it all the way down to $20 a barrel. Right now, because of its overdependence on the oil economy, the State of Alaska is hemorrhaging. Oil revenues are down by half. The permanent fund is hemorrhaging.…”