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Under the circumstances, it is no wonder that the oil companies still talk of sending icebreaking supertankers to butt through the Northwest Passage. "The very idea of transporting oil through the Arctic ice packs in 250,000-ton tankers causes ecologists to go green at the gills," says Zoologist Douglas Pimlott of the University of Toronto, "because sooner or later one will sink" and oil and icy water clearly do not mix.
To some people, the Alaskan environment is more precious than the oil. Conservationist David Brower, president of Friends of the Earth, argues that oil withdrawals should be rationed for several centuries. Others feel that the environment is secondary to more pressing priorities. Oil executives, for example, point out that as long as the U.S. insists on its cars and all the other machines requiring fuel, oil companies will have to supply the demand. As one oil man puts it: "We are a high-energy society, and oil generates 75% of our energy." Politicians talk of "national security"—meaning both the economic well-being of Americans and the ability of the U.S. to stand firm against foreign threats to cut the international flow of oil.
The fact is that even with the North Slope strike, the U.S. will never again be self-sufficient in oil. When Prudhoe Bay crude starts flowing to the lower 48 states, it will satisfy only 5% of the U.S.'s annual demand. The rest will continue to come from Texas, Louisiana, California—and foreign producers. Beyond that, there are other potential oil sources, although admittedly uncertain and still in the far future. Some experts envision a North American energy market that would tap Canada's vast, undeveloped supplies. When the world's oil wells are fully depleted, there will still be immense reserves locked away in tar sands and shale. By then, nuclear energy will help to supply the "highenergy society." All this does not mean that Alaskan oil is unnecessary to the U.S. It does mean that it can be developed gradually and with suitable environmental controls. Its impact should be judged primarily in relation to the needs of Alaska.
If the oil boom is regenerated, it may not directly affect two persistent areas of poverty—seasonal unemployment in the fishing and wood-pulp industries, and the exclusion of the natives from the economy. But it would obviously benefit the economy generally, especially the real estate, construction, retail-trade and mineral-exploration industries. The key question is what Alaska will do with the cash that oil pays the state in leases and royalties. Alaskan Economist Arlon R. Tussing suggests that "the only way to guarantee that the money does any good to most of us is to hand it out to the people. The state should