With everybody focused on Trump pulling out of the Paris accords, we almost missed that his administration wants to start drilling more giant holes in Alaska.

Courtesy of Newsweek: 

With all eyes on President Donald Trump’s announcement to withdrawal from the Paris climate accord, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has signed an order to “jump-start Alaskan energy”—meaning, in this case, to drill for more oil. 

The order pertains to two places: the National Petroleum Reserve–Alaska (NPR-A), the largest block of federally managed land in the United States, and the coastal region of the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), the so-called “1002 area.” It calls for a “lawful review and development of a revised Integrated Activity Plan” aimed toward increased petroleum production from these lands, Zinke said in a statement. The move will reassess the current management plan, and it calls for an update to estimates about quantities of oil beneath the ground within three weeks. 

Attempts to drill in ANWR have been repeatedly defeated in Congress and face stiff opposition from Native Alaskan groups. The announcement was decried by environmental groups. Kristen Miller of the Alaska Wilderness League told the Associated Press that Zinke's order upsets a management plan that the Interior Department spent years creating with tribes, local governments, the state and others. "We and the hundreds of thousands of Americans who actively supported the current management plan will not sit idly by while this administration tries to give these public lands wholesale to the oil industry," Miller said. “ANWR is a national treasure and an amazing piece of land,” echoed Nicole Whittington-Evans, the Wilderness Society’s Alaska regional director, speaking to Fox News. “It is not a place where oil and gas development should be allowed.”

My assumption is that this is nothing more than throwing a bone to Trump's fossil fuel company benefactors so that they can brag to their investors that they are pursuing new drilling opportunities.

We are still in the throes of a crude oil glut, and even without this new exploration in Alaska 2018 is poised to be produce record oil output.

Simply put it is incredibly expensive to drill in the arctic, and that is even before the numerous court battles that are certain to slow down exploration.

It is time for the Republicans to face the fact that renewable energy is the future, and their insistence on pushing for more fossil fuel production is akin to old time investors pouring money into the building of new horse stables and buggy manufacturing plants while the whole world fell in love with the automobile.