I guess I am not the ONLY Alaskan who opposes more oil exploration here.

The new generators in this remote Yukon Flats village shut down every night at 10:30, after the televised evening news, as a way to save fuel. The electric blackout ends in the morning, before caribou meat and other frozen goods begin to thaw.

Times are getting harder in Arctic Village, where diesel fuel arrives by air tanker and retails for $8.50 a gallon. But soaring fuel costs haven't softened opposition here and in other Yukon Flats villages to oil drilling in their own region.

A complex land trade that would hasten oil and gas exploration inside the Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge continues to draw protest from local villages, despite a promise of jobs and revenue from the region's big Native corporation, Doyon Ltd.

Indeed, packed houses at community meetings helped slow the six-year negotiation to a crawl, and time may now be running out for Bush administration officials who support the deal.

Gwichin Indian leaders say they are worried about pollution from oil spills in the vast wetland basin. They also fear changes to their hunting and fishing territory that would come with a road connection to the outside world.

Trimble Gilbert, the 73-year-old traditional chief in Arctic Village, said he is advising people to hone their hunting and trapping skills to prepare for the hard economic times ahead. An oil boom would offer only a short-term respite, he said.

To be fair I am not at all sure that the Gwichin Indians would care if the drilling were not to occur in their own back yard. But drilling in Alaska is ALWAYS in somebodies back yard. They are not always human backyards, but hey we need to respect the impact this has on the indigenous animal populations as well.

The point is that we can find alternate energy sources, and Alaska has many of the resources that can be utilized to move our state and country away from their unhealthy dependency on fossil fuels. We could grow numerous crops in the Matanuska valley that could be used for ethanol, we have tons of space that can be utilized for wind farms, and we already have a great model for thermal energy at Chena Hot Springs. We no longer need to pull up poisonous materials from the ground that are destined to pollute the very air we breathe which will negatively affect our plants, our animals, and our fellow humans.

It is time for us to grow up and take responsibility for how our selfishness is impacting the planet that we call home.