The Environmental Disaster Tucked Into the Tax Bill

The Republican tax bill opens up a wildlife refuge in Alaska to oil drilling.

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR)fazeful/Getty

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge—recognized for its picturesque vistas and wildlife—has been a battleground for Democrats and Republicans for years. The 20-million-acre park sits above large oil and gas reserves, which Republicans, including Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), have eyed as a huge source of revenue for the state. Several efforts to allow drilling over the past 40 years have been blocked by Congress or by presidential vetoes, but the fate of the refuge now hinges on an unlikely fulcrum: the Republican’s latest tax bill.

Within the folds of the tax bill is a little-know drilling measure, which would allow for gas and oil production within a 1.5-million-acre portion of the refuge. This would generate an estimated $1.1 billion over the course of a decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Environmentalists, however, say the site is a critical habitat for hundreds of animal species, including foxes, polar bears, and caribou, and therefore in need of protection. Drilling could also threaten sacred lands for the Native Alaskan Gwich’in tribe.

“The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is one of the crowned jewels of our public lands,” Ana Unruh Cohen, the director of government affairs at the Natural Resources Defense Council tells Mother Jones. “Drilling there would totally mar this beautiful place.”

With the Senate expected to vote on the tax bill late Thursday or early Friday, Republicans have been working hard to round up votes that would ensure the bill’s passing. Murkowski, bucked party leadership earlier this year and voted against Obamacare repeal, had requested the drilling provision be added and now supports the bill, the Washington Post reports

The measure, added earlier this week, essentially broke Senate rules about what can be added to the tax bill. The provisions, according to Unruh Cohen, “stepped on the jurisdiction” of the Environmental and Public Works Committee. Changes to the language in the measure have been made, according to Murkowski. “We have done it and we’re ready to go,” she said. But, there has “still been some arguing” as to whether those changes abide by Senate rules, says Unruh Cohen. “They’re trying to make a number of changes. It’s still not 100 percent clear if those will be final. It’s very much a wait-and-see situation,” she says.

Republicans need at least 50 of the 52 GOP senators to vote for the bill in order to pass it. Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.), a Republican who has previously been apprehensive of the plan, also said Thursday he would support the bill.  

“Right now, Lisa Murkowski may well represent the 50th vote, and that puts her in the driver seat to ask for whatever she wants. The things she seems to want most is opening the Arctic refuge,” Niel Lawrence, Alaska program director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, told the New York Times.

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate