Environment

Oil drilling plans for Arctic wildlife refuge

Alaska is a long way north and four time zones away from Washington. But there is one item folded into United States President Donald Trump's tax reform package, whose effects will be profound at the very tip of the northern-most state - the proposed opening up of part of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to the oil and gas industry, leasing vast tracts of land in an area - believed to hold 27 billion barrels of oil and 3.7 trillion cubic metres of natural gas.

Long eyed by the oil and gas industry, the ANWR has been jealously guarded by environmentalists and local indigenous people who, to a significant degree, still live off the land and on the herds of caribou that roam it.

The environmentally unfriendly Trump Administration appears to be quite unconcerned about the disastrous impact oil drilling will have on the ANWR, its wildlife and people, so long as the US President’s big business supporters can capture and exploit more natural resources - just to make a bit more profit.