It has vanished repeatedly in our history. The imagination would do well, in this case, to learn from the past. In 1987, energy industry spokesman Jamie Linxweiler stated in a televised debate that the environmental record of the oil industry was unblemished in Alaska. Two years later the Exxon Valdez spilled at least 11 million gallons of oil into Prince William Sound. The spill hit all Alaskans as a tragedy.
Pride rushes back, however, at the first opportunity.
The oil lobby assures us that now our technology can guarantee a happy outcome. One hears the sound of language in service to addiction. The future belongs to our children and their children. It would do them no harm were we to learn from the native people and reclaim our spiritual connection to the land itself. Marjorie Kowalski Cole is a writer in Ester, Alaska, and a member of the Alaska Boreal Forest Council, an environmental education group.