i'm still doing a slow burn over sensible shoes' recent diary my alaska, in which alaskans generally got trashed for selling out to big oil for a small annual stipend, and caring nothing for their surroundings or the preservation of wilderness lands.
i get the impression shoie visited bush alaska, or maybe lived in a village for awhile and decided to tell everyone here everything that was bad and nothing that was good about it. so we heard tales of crippling social problems, poverty, a lack of hygiene, animals butchered in bathtubs that are not used for bathing, and ten dollars for a pint of orange juice.
more rant below....
you can be elitists about it all you want. but the native peoples of alaska's north slope are more in touch with environmental issues than most of the rest of you. these are the people with 29 words to describe different types of snow. many of them still live a subsistence lifestyle, and hunt and fish in severe weather conditions. in barrow, in traditions dating back thousands of years, all of the residents turn out to help land a bowhead whale and participate in the butchering and distribution of the whale meat. all of the animal is used.
in anchorage where i live, there is a state park in the foothills and mountains right outside town that includes 20 or 30 5,000 to 10,000 ft peaks and hundreds of acres of rugged land. there are 200 miles of multi-use trails in the city, 20 miles are illuminted for cross-country skiing on winter nights. almost all of the coastline in anchorage is park land and a network of paved bicycle trails criss-crosses the city.
statewide, we have one of the strictest sign ordinances in the country. there's not a single billboard in the state, no advertising signs are allowed further than 150 feet from a business entrance and those that are allowed are limited in size. and view corridors are preserved in other ways, too.
we have hunting and fishing opportunities that are second to none in the US because we have aggressively maintained and managed habitat and monitored development's effect on all of our species.
the closest nuclear power plant is in eastern russia.
we do have problems with domestic violence and alcoholism, but we also rank fifth amongst the states in the least percentage of the population that's obese, near the top in the percentage of the population that gets regular exercise, and we have many star athletes.
i'm not in favor of drilling in ANWR either. but i fail to see how an environmental, political or any other cause is advanced by deciding that an entire state is ignorant, and you in the lower 48 know a lot more about environmental stewardship than we do. look around you and clean up your own house first.