The coastal plain is as flat as Plano and a barren blur of white where the ocean and the onshore permafrost are frozen together. The brief summer is a dramatic contrast. The region becomes a green wetland visited by millions of birds and tens of thousands of caribou. Rivers that start in the nearby Brooks Range flood their banks in a welter of snowmelt and ice. Parts of the coastal plain suffocate under clouds of mosquitoes.
Winds keep animals and humans along the shoreline and Barter Island free of the torment.
Even an uphill fight to open ANWR is worth it, because of the nation's energy security, says state Rep. Eldon Mulder, an Anchorage Republican. But national security has other dimensions - like global warming. Bruce Molnia, a glaciologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, has studied thousands of Alaskan glaciers.