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Biden Admin Invoked ‘Indigenous Knowledge’ To Cut Alaska Drilling, But Some Tribal Leaders Are Ready For Trump

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The Biden administration justified major crackdowns on fossil fuel and mineral development in Alaska by playing up its commitment to Native American tribes, but some community leaders who spoke with the Daily Caller News Foundation said they did not feel respected by the administration

Over the course of the last four years, the Biden administration moved to shut down drilling activity on tens millions of acres of land in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPR-A) and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), retroactively canceled lease sales and effectively blocked a major mining project in the state, often touting the administration’s commitment to protecting the environment for native communities in official statements and press releases. However, these actions were a major disappointment to some of Alaska’s natives, who told the DCNF that the administration seems to have mostly ignored their desire to allow development that generates revenues for their communities and that they are ready to work with the incoming Trump administration to strike an appropriate balance.

“With climate change warming the Arctic more than twice as fast as the rest of the planet, we must do everything within our control to meet the highest standards of care to protect this fragile ecosystem,” Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland said in a September 2023 statement after the administration moved to shield 13 million acres from drilling activity in the NPR-A and retroactively canceled lease sales. “President Biden is delivering on the most ambitious climate and conservation agenda in history. The steps we are taking today further that commitment, based on the best available science and in recognition of the Indigenous Knowledge of the original stewards of this area, to safeguard our public lands for future generations.”

However, the administration’s deference to “Indigenous Knowledge” did not mean much to some tribal leaders and officials in light of the government’s apparent disinterest in meaningfully engaging with them about key issues related to resource development.

Nagruk Harcharek is the president of Voice of the Arctic Iñupiat, an organization that represents the interests of numerous native communities in the resource-rich North Slope region of Alaska. In his view, the Biden administration was not particularly interested in hearing what his organization had to say about the value of the economic benefits that resource development provides for his community.

“I started here in 2022. The first thing I did was try to get in there and make sure our voices were heard, because what we’re hearing from the administration is that we’re the most tribally-friendly administration in the history of the United States, right? ” Harcharek told the DCNF. “At least from our perspective, that’s not our impression.”

“We’ve always tried to stress that we are part of the environment. We utilize it for subsistence hunting, for our culture, and it’s extremely important to us. We don’t need to be protected from our own environment,” Harcharek continued. “We can make decisions and help administrations make decisions that are both good for the region and also good for the environment and good for the state, good for the nation. And that just wasn’t the case. There was a lack of engagement, meaningful engagement. Oftentimes, we heard of policy changes in the news and not from phone calls from folks, even though everybody has our number.”

Harcharek says his organization attempted to secure a meeting with Haaland on nine different occasions, but only managed to get a chance in June of this year. Other times, the Department of the Interior (DOI) sent staffers or other officials to meet with them, if their outreach to the government was even returned.

“Sometimes we didn’t even get a response from those emails, so saying that they’re the most tribally-friendly and then not speaking to most of our tribes or us in a timely manner or a meaningful manner, the just question is, who are you? Who considers you the most tribally friendly organization? Because it sure isn’t us, or we’re not getting that sentiment,” Harcharek said.

Doreen Leavitt, secretary for the Inupiat Community of the Arctic Slope (ICAS), also ripped Haaland for lackluster engagement with her community since 2021 and expressed hope that Republican North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum — Trump’s pick to replace Haaland — will be a better leader at DOI.

“Secretary Haaland’s leadership for ICAS and our region was not just deeply frustrating, but it was saddening because as an indigenous woman myself, who wants to see other indigenous women in leadership succeed and grow, her lack of respect for our region was frustrating, to say the least, despite her recognition of tribal stewardship, our requests for consultation on critical issues were ignored or dismissed,” Leavitt told the DCNF. “I don’t know much about Secretary Burgum, other than that he comes from the Dakotas, but we will expect the incoming secretary to provide that meaningful consultation, that transparent process and respect for our tribal sovereignty and self-determination and those things we did not see under Haaland.”

Leavitt also explained that resource development has provided the money her community needed over the past 50 years to establish and maintain basic things like running water, school systems, health clinics, emergency services and more.

Without taking a political stance, Leavitt noted that she and her organization are “especially looking forward to having the government-to-government relationship rights respected” by the incoming Trump administration.

Charles Lampe, the president of Kaktovik Iñupiat Corporation, said that he and his people are looking forward to Trump’s return to power after sensing that most of his community’s concerns about cracking down hard on resource development were “pretty much just cast aside” by the Biden administration.

“We’re really excited about the next four years. With the previous administration, the Trump administration, we had a great relationship. We just felt like we were actually listened to during that time,” Lampe told the DCNF.

AUTHOR

Nick Pope

Contributor.

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Nuclear Is A Renewable Energy: Wind and Solar lobbyists are fighting this reality!

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As a physicist, I believe that one of the reasons that intelligent energy policies have not gained sufficient traction is that we are allowing those with political agendas (vs independent scientists) to define some key energy terms.

[One thing I know from golf, is that a match is usually won or lost at the first tee — where the terms and conditions are agreed on.]

Outside of “fiscal responsibility” and “all of the above” the most significant misused concept that we have unwittingly gone along with is the term “renewable” energy.

Giving some critical thought to this moniker is no academic matter, as what is defined as “renewable” determines what sources of electricity are eligible for massive handouts and other preferential treatments.

In other words, what is legally defined as a “renewable” will have profound technical, economic, and environmental consequences on the United States.

The renewable energy lobby is extremely aggressive on all aspects of legality, and has made sure that only politically favored energy sources are awarded these perks (e.g., see here). Note that in that definition, “renewable” energy is not defined by what it does (or does not) do, but rather by a list of politically acceptable sources!

To my knowledge, there is no “official” definition of this bandied-about term. When asked, the meanings proffered vary quite a bit, but the key difference between a renewable and non-renewable energy source is usually the rate of replenishment.

Consider this typical definition: “Renewable is an energy resource that is replaced in a reasonable amount of time (our lifetime, our children’s lifetime)…”

Such a word as “reasonable” is subjective — not scientific. Who determines what is a reasonable amount of time, and what is it: 20 years? 100 years? 500 years?

The reason the definition of renewable is focused on time, derives from the concern that we may exhaust some electrical energy sources, relatively soon.

But how much is enough to have? For instance, if we have 100 years of some fuel, would the replenishment rate really be that important?

Clearly, within the next 100 years of use, there will be some profound changes made regarding the efficiency and applications of said fuel’s implementation — in ways we have little understanding of today.

At the time there were well-reasoned expectations in 1950 about what would happen in the year 2000. The message is that almost ALL of the best guesses were wrong. A good example is that today we use LESS renewable energy than we did in 1950!

In the same vein, prior technology predictions by experts (like Einstein) have also proven to be significantly off the mark. Who among us will stand to say that we have a better understanding of technology than Einstein?

In that light, let’s look at the case for nuclear being “renewable.”

First, we should answer how much longer will our nuclear fuel supply last. Consider:

a) This says: “The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in 2008 jointly produced a report saying that uranium resources are adequate to meet nuclear energy needs for at least the next 100 years at present consumption levels. More efficient fast reactors could extend that period to more than 2,500 years.”

It is absurd to say that a 2500-year supply doesn’t qualify this as renewable.

b) In addition, there are several proven alternatives to uranium as a source. One example is Thorium (which is much more plentiful than uranium).

[Read this 2023 study about “The Sustainability of Mineral Resources.” Note that it states “no tools are currently available to allow a comprehensive evaluation of mineral raw material abundance“.]

c) Bernard Cohen (Professor Emeritus of Physics at Pittsburgh University) has stated that breeder reactors have enough raw material energy sources to last us over a Billion years. That’s Billion with a “B”.

When considering these sample facts, an important thing to keep in mind is this quote from some scientists at an excellent University of Michigan site: “Only 50 years ago, nuclear energy was an exotic, futuristic technology, the subject of experimentation and far-fetched ideas.”

Hard as it might seem to believe, most of this nuclear development has occurred in just the tiny space of 50± years — so having any fuel supply that lasts 100± years could cover an enormous amount of new development.

Second, some definitions of “Renewable” include a reference to “power derived from natural sources”. Of course, that is amusingly non-descriptive since essentially all sources of electrical power are based on natural materials, and that includes nuclear.

To read more about this I’d strongly recommend Bill Tucker’s excellent book Terrestrial Energy, or a more condensed discussion he wrote.

A third factor sometimes appearing in the definition of “Renewable” is a reference to a power source’s ability to reduce CO2 (i.e., to be a “clean” source). That same University of Michigan site (above) has this very informative graph about how (worldwide) we have been able to reduce CO2 since 1973.

Now, for the sake of comparison, let’s quickly look at the flip side of this question, at the poster child for renewables: wind energy.

The indisputable fact is that an indispensable part of wind power electricity production is the requirement of LARGE amounts of rare-earth metals. Each wind turbine is reported to have several thousands of pounds of rare-earth materials (typically 2000± pounds per MW. An average-size wind turbine today is something like 5 MW.)

This study concluded that all rare-earth materials might be gone in 20± years! And several more reports warn us of the very limited supplies of these materials, like this.

I could go on, but just considering this information, which is the true renewable: wind energy or nuclear power?

©2024. John Droz, Jr. All rights reserved.

Here are other materials from this scientist that you might find interesting:

My Substack Commentaries for 2023 (arranged by topic)

Check out the chronological Archives of my entire Critical Thinking substack.

WiseEnergy.org: discusses the Science (or lack thereof) behind our energy options.

C19Science.info: covers the lack of genuine Science behind our COVID-19 policies.

Election-Integrity.info: multiple major reports on the election integrity issue.

Media Balance Newsletter: a free, twice-a-month newsletter that covers what the mainstream media does not do, on issues from COVID to climate, elections to education, renewables to religion, etc. Here are the Newsletter’s 2023 Archives. Please send me an email to get your free copy. When emailing me, please make sure to include your full name and the state where you live. (Of course, you can cancel the Media Balance Newsletter at any time – but why would you?

The Poor Need Affordable Energy by Iain Murray

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Affordable energy is fundamental to what economist Deirdre McCloskey calls the “Great Fact” of the explosion of human welfare. It remains central to the reduction of absolute poverty. Yet, some Western governments are working to increase energy costs, purportedly to combat global warming.

What they are really combating is prosperity.

This is perverse and regressive. In America and Europe, energy takes up a much larger share of poor households’ budgets compared to other income brackets. For instance, a household with an annual income between $10,000 and $25,000 spends well over 10 percent of its budget on energy, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And a January 2014 study for the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity found that “households earning $50,000 or less spend more on energy than on food, spend twice as much on energy as on health care, and spend more than twice as much on energy as on clothing.”

Increasing the cost of energy also harms people’s health. That’s because energy use is so fundamental to modern life that it can take precedence over other household expenses — including health care. The National Energy Assistance Directors’ Association found that an increase in energy costs led 30 percent of poor households to reduce purchases of food, 40 percent to go without medical care, and 33 percent to not fill a prescription.

The term “fuel poverty” describes households in cold climates that are not able to keep their home warm at an affordable cost. The primary causes of fuel poverty are low income, poor insulation, and high energy prices. Eight percent of households in Belgium, France, Spain, Italy, and the United Kingdom suffer from some form of fuel poverty, according to the European Union’s European Fuel Poverty and Energy Efficiency consortium project. In the UK, where there is much more data owing to an official designation of fuel poverty, a household is defined as fuel poor if it has to spend 10 percent of its income on essential energy services; 20 percent of households meet this definition.

Despite this, Western governments are pursuing policies to increase energy prices. President Obama said during his first election campaign that electricity rates from coal would “necessarily skyrocket” under his policies; this may finally come to pass under his EPA’s proposed Clean Power Plan. In Western Europe, energy costs have increased due to a combination of renewable energy subsidies and mandates, bans or moratoria on hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”), hostility to nuclear energy, and Russia’s control of natural gas supplies for much of the continent’s eastern half.

Despite the president’s policies, US energy markets have shown that innovation beats regulation every time. Even though huge swaths of American energy resources are locked up under untouchable federal lands, energy production has boomed over the past decade, thanks to the development of horizontal drilling and improved hydraulic fracturing techniques. These technological advances have led to lower electricity prices from natural gas. And subsurface property rights have benefited both urban and rural households through royalty payments for energy production on their land.

Moreover, as gas became more affordable, it led to a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Indeed, thanks to energy innovation, America met the emissions targets set for it in the Kyoto Protocol, without any need for burdensome laws and regulation — or for the Kyoto Protocol itself. Whatever you think of the need for carbon emissions reduction, energy innovation is achieving that goal.

This is all to the good, but more energy innovation is possible. They key is greater liberalization. America should free up federal lands to energy development, rather than pickle them in regulatory aspic. Europe could enjoy its own energy boom by approving hydraulic fracturing.

Reducing artificially high energy costs is the first step in tackling fuel poverty. In America, the market is alleviating the burden of energy costs on poor households, even as the government goes the wrong way. That shows us the way forward for tackling the much greater problem in the developing world.


Iain Murray

Iain Murray is vice president at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.