My Twitter Feed

March 28, 2024

Headlines:

No Time for Tuckerman -

Thursday, August 3, 2023

The Quitter Returns! -

Monday, March 21, 2022

Putting the goober in gubernatorial -

Friday, January 28, 2022

Murky Weighs In, We’ve Moved On

Alaska Gov. Murkowski Discusses Alaska Oil And Gas Industry

You’d think that a former governor who presided over the most corrupt government in Alaska since statehood would stay home and write his memoirs or something. You’d think a former Governor whose own Chief of Staff served a prison sentence for illegal campaign contributions would thank his lucky stars that Chief of Staff didn’t tell the Feds everything he knew and would keep discretely quiet. You’d think a failed candidate who helped give us Sarah Palin would have the simple decency to maintain an embarrassed silence. You’d think the man who single-handedly killed a national bank and seriously wounded a regional Native corporation would just shut up. But we’re talking about Frank “the Bank” Murkowski. You remember. Murky.

Which explains why Murky was in front of the Greater Fairbanks Chamber of Commerce recently. Not to apologize for being a disaster as Governor. Not to apologize for stuff that happened on his watch. Not even to make excuses. No, he was in front of the Chamber to blame everything on “extreme environmentalists.”

WC supposes that on Murky’s scale of environmentalists WC counts as one of those extremists. WC thinks that before you dig up the millions of tons of coal on the North Slope, maybe you need to think about the consequences for the planet of pumping all that CO2 and dirty-coal pollution into the atmosphere. WC thinks that before you cut more old growth forest in the Tongass National Forest you have a care for the future of the forest, the impact on fisheries and the impact on tourism. WC thinks before you dig the world’s largest gold and copper mine and create the world’s largest sulfide-laced, heavy metal-contaminated lake and spoil heap, you think about whether that’s a smart idea in the world’s most productive salmon habitat. WC thinks that before you drill for oil near Teshekpuk Lake, you consider whether that can be done without jeopardizing tens of millions of migratory birds.

Let me put this in terms Murky is certain to understand. If considering those things before proceeding with development makes you an extreme environmentalist, WC pleads guilty as charged.

More than that, though, WC thinks that among all but the most rabid drillers and diggers, even in Alaska, the days of jobs at any price are behind us. A majority of Alaskans were shocked and appalled at the Keystone Cops act of Shell Oil and its attempts to drill in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas. The days of “Drill, Baby, drill” are an embarrassing memory.

But not to Murky.

Nor is he any more honest now than he was as governor. The claim that no oil has been produced from federal lands? He implies that’s because of extreme environmentalists. But, of course, all the oil has been produced from federal lands. Some of it – the stuff with the very highest potential for oil and gas – was selected by the State of Alaska under the Statehood Act. We’ve got the good stuff. The Feds have leased land for development; remember Shell Oil’s Keystone Cops act? All of that was on off-shore federal land. It just hasn’t produced any oil or gas. Millions of federal acres are available for development. Most recently, the overwhelming majority of National Petroleum Reserve Alaska has been made available for lease. Under a Democratic President. Something that didn’t happen during Murky’s tenure as U.S. Senator. The oil companies just haven’t found marketable quantities of oil. Blaming “extreme environmentalists” is fundamentally dishonest. It’s Murky.

But ignore the straw man arguments. Ignore the dishonest arguments. Murky’s view is that development is so overwhelmingly important that nothing else matters. It’s a minority view. Even in Alaska. Maybe even at the Chamber of Commerce. We’ve moved on.

Nothing to see here. Just another old geezer stuck in the 1970s. Move along.

Comments

comments

Comments
5 Responses to “Murky Weighs In, We’ve Moved On”
  1. Alaska Pi says:

    I dunno. I agree on most fronts and most especially that we have (mostly) moved on.
    However, Mr Murkowski’s extreme-environmentalists yap continues to find new mouths to
    pop out of. I hear it all the time.
    Alaska is way overdue to have a meaningful public conversation about environmental concerns. Our Stevens-Young-Murkowski triad relied on the EE dealie for a long, long time – to scare folks here, push development for development’s sake, and shush anyone asking questions.
    The settled court case over the BB Area Plan, and land use designations re-do required, come from policies and procedures FM’s administration put in place. The villages who sued insisted it was all to do an end run around state law to fast track Pebble (oversimplification). Given we have a as-bad-or-worse administration working on the re-do, we really, really need to look at exorcising the EE spectre Mr Murkowski helped build and nourish to keep us in thrall. We won’t truly be done with him until we take out THAT trash.
    Given Frank the Bank’s remarks here are mostly in relation to the Fed not roaring full oil ahead on federal land , he is also tapping into the whole hate-the-fed routine, which Cap’n Torpedo and too many others here have built into a heckuva big (phony) deal.
    Given he bankrupted his own lil self /administration, I agree he himself is irrelevant.
    His gobbeldy-gook ideas are still too prevalent .

  2. Remeber when... says:

    Hey – as much as you knock Frank – you forget one thing he did…real quiet that became a nuke!!!
    Reversing the Statutes of Limitations in 2003…he could have swept it under the rug like the military is trying to do but instead he got angry and said “I am done fooling around” Check ADN…I read it and sat and cried…
    After that the Natives came forward with complaints about the Catholic Church priests in Alaska…
    It spread to the lower 48 and lit up and went global and to this day there are charges pending for priests…
    Now I understand that he is a “fat cat” of politics…but he is a father and took his power and did a good deed…

  3. UgaVic says:

    Definitely move on ….old man stuck in the ways of ‘old and backward’ thinking!!

  4. mike from iowa says:

    Dude looks like a chinless wimp or rather a winless chimp or something.

  5. Zyxomma says:

    I’m with Wickershams Conscience, of course (and thanks for your terrific rough-legged hawk photo the other day).

    We only have one small, delicate planet. We do not inherit it from our ancestors, we bequeath it to our children. And here we are, at 400 ppm carbon dioxide, with no end to our foul fossil fuel burning ways in sight.

    For a little perspective, look at our Earth from the POV of Canadian Commander Chris Hadfield, performing his electrifying rendition of David Bowie’s Space Oddity from the International Space Station. It was released right before he came home. His Twitter feed is also well worth checking out:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaOC9danxNo