Trump Makes a No-News Announcement About Drilling in Alaska (Are You Distracted Yet?)

The Alaska National Wildlife Refuge holds both ends of two rainbows. It's golden.

What do you get when you name an oil and gas lobbyist to head the Department of the Interior? You get drilling in pristine wilderness.

On Monday, POTUS announced that 8 percent of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge -- the coastal plains area -- will be leased to private companies. That's 1.56 million acres of the refuge.

This isn't new news. Trump's permission to pull off this travesty was built into the 2017 budget bill. The announcement amounts to private greed waving cheerfully from the Oval Office. It is likely part of an effort to upstage the Democratic National Convention, which began on Monday night.

The legislation requires at least two lease sales of a minimum of 400,000 acres each, one before December 22, 2021 and one before December 22, 2024. Interior Secretary David Bernhardt did not specify when the sales will actually occur.

Nevertheless, Republicans are crowing, particularly in deep-red Alaska. Senator Lisa Murkowski called it a "capstone" achievement. Murkowski is chair of the Senate’s Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

The area is caribou hunting grounds for the G'wichin Native American people, and it's also home to black (grizzly) bears, polar bears, gray wolves, and arctic foxes. Not to mention permafrost, which is melting in the area and will melt even more rapidly with development. The melting, in turn, will speed up climate change.

Environmentalists are predictably furious. The most succinct response came from the Sierra Club: "We’ll see them in court.”

In other news, the Pentagon announced Friday that it would create a task force to investigate Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, better known as UFOs. Taken together with Alaskan permafrost, one wonders -- does the administration have its claws out for little green [men] things?

Do you think Trump's attempts to grab the headlines will work for him, or backfire? Have you seen other attempts by Republicans to grab headline space for this week?

"File:Alaska ANWR Canning River.jpg" by Jan Reurink from Netherlands is licensed under CC BY 2.0

https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/512294-trump-administration-finalizes-plan-to-open-up-alaska-wildlife?fbclid=IwAR3XusUNWoNm1ztjoKwu0c2zWiTbyPsPHcmMu_suD5Dbs1vvYWBX5hGyCiI

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/14/ufo-pentagon-task-froce-395683?fbclid=IwAR0U8U3AgmYd7wQDKsICW7lUigK5l0kSZFAd2wEgF9HEkLBz7BxxrB0xGpo