Micah Baird
I’ll be honest: when congressional Republicans voted last December to open up the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil and gas drilling, it was pretty devastating. One of the world’s last truly wild places, the Arctic Refuge, is an important symbol of the wild and of all that the Sierra Club fights to protect. It is also considered sacred by the Alaska Native Gwich’in Nation, with whom we worked furiously, and unsuccessfully, to defeat this greed-fueled legislation. Congress has shown its hand -- if this place isn’t too special to be protected from the dangers of oil and gas drilling, nowhere is safe.
Since that vote, the Trump administration has jumped at the chance to auction off the Arctic Refuge to fossil fuel companies on an accelerated schedule, with plans to hold a lease sale by next year. This is a threat the Arctic Refuge hasn’t seen in decades, but the fight to defend this place is far from over. We’re committed to standing with the Gwich’in Nation, whose food security and way of life depend on the Refuge, in fighting this administration -- and the fossil fuel corporations they kowtow to -- every step of the way as they try to wreak havoc on the Refuge’s coastal plain.
We’re not alone in this fight. In fact, we’re joined in our commitment to protecting this sacred place by some unlikely allies: some of the world’s most significant investors.
Today, a group of institutional investors representing $2.52 trillion in assets sent a letter to oil and gas companies and major banks that might have interest in Arctic operations, urging them not to initiate any oil and gas development in the Arctic Refuge. This group included religious endowments, pension fund managers, and major asset managers, all sending a strong message that drilling in the Arctic Refuge is a bad investment.
Add Your Comment and Help Keep Big Oil Out Of the Arctic Refuge: We’re racing against time to protect the Arctic Refuge from oil drilling. The Department of the Interior just began the environmental review process for a lease sale in the refuge. Add your name today.
Also today, we joined the Gwich’in Steering Committee and more than 100 other environmental and Indigenous rights groups to send our own letter, making the case for why oil companies and the banks that fund them should pledge to stay out of the Arctic.
It should be obvious why drilling in the Arctic is a terrible idea for oil companies and for the banks that fund them. The overwhelming majority of the American people support keeping this fragile, pristine wilderness protected, and with good reason.
The refuge is home to some of the most abundant and diverse wildlife anywhere in the world. Birds from all 50 states and six continents migrate annually to the coastal plain because of the incredible abundance of food there during the long Arctic summers. This place is one of the last truly wild and intact ecosystems on earth. The coastal plain supports the subsistence way of life of the Gwich’in people, who depend on the porcupine caribou herd that birth their young in the coastal plain for their primary food source. Oil and gas operations there would threaten their food security and survival. It would also exacerbate climate change. If developed, fossil fuel operations in the area would create the climate emissions equivalent to 898 coal plants or 776 million cars.
As the investors wrote in their letter: “Any oil company or bank that supports drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge faces enormous reputational risk and public backlash. Their brands would be associated with destroying pristine wilderness, contributing to the climate crisis, and trampling on human rights.”
Now, these companies are at a crossroads. They can side with the public, human rights and environmental advocates, and climate justice groups by pledging to stay out of the Arctic Refuge and investing in the clean energy of the future, or they can risk losing their social license and trillions in funds in pursuit of the dirty fuels of the past.
We have a moral obligation to do everything we can to protect the Arctic Refuge and to stand with the Gwich’in, and we’ll continue to fight -- backed by this diverse and powerful coalition -- to make sure that drilling rigs never enter the borders of this rare natural wonder.