Saving the Artic National Wildlife Refuge

[Guest guest]

I hope it's OK to pass this information on to these

lists. I feel strongly about this issue and hope

some of you do also. Thanks for your time. Mary

 

 

Dear Friend,

I've never circulated this kind of email before. But

I am so

appalled by President Bush's plan to open up the

Arctic

National Wildlife Refuge to massive oil development

that I

feel I must do whatever I can to help stop it.

 

To me, the Arctic Refuge represents everything

spectacular

and everything endangered about America's natural

heritage:

a million years of ecological serenity . . . vast

expanses

of untouched wilderness . . . an irreplaceable

sanctuary for

polar bears, white wolves and 130,000 caribou that

return

here each year to give birth and rear their young.

For

20,000 years-literally hundreds of generations-the

native Gwich'in people have inhabited this sacred

place,

following the caribou herd and leaving the

awe-inspiring

landscape just as they found it. Our own presidents

going

back to Eisenhower have kept a bipartisan promise to

 

safeguard this world-class natural treasure. But not

THIS

president. It is a sad day indeed when our president

and

congressional leaders would sacrifice America's

largest

wildlife refuge for the sake of a possible six-month

supply

of national energy. A six-month supply! We could

save that

little oil by improving the fuel efficiency of cars

and

light trucks by a mere one mile per gallon.

 

Only one group of Americans will benefit from the

destruction of the Arctic Wildlife Refuge: the oil

giants.

Everyone else loses. Arctic wildlife populations

will

decline, the Gwich'in people will see their land

marred by

pipelines and poisoned by oil spills, you and I will

become

even more dependent on oil, and the planet will

suffer

catastrophic global warming from the burning of even

more

fossil fuel.

 

Unless we get millions of Americans to lodge a

protest right

now, this nightmarish scenario may well come to pass

in the

next two months. The Republican energy bill, which

would

fulfill the president's promise to drill the Arctic

Refuge,

is moving through Congress today. House and Senate

leaders

may also try to sneak through the Arctic drilling

provision

by attaching it to a "must-pass" appropriations

bill. These

votes will be decided by the moderates in both

parties. We

must reach those moderates and hold them

accountable.

 

Here's what you can do: go to

http://www.savebiogems.org/arctic

 

The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) has set

up this

new website to make it extremely easy for you to

send

messages of protest to your senators and

represenative. It

will take you only a minute.

 

I've been on NRDC's board for 25 years, so I know

how

effective they are at waging and winning

environmental

campaigns. Last year, NRDC used web activism to help

 

generate a million messages of protest to Mitsubishi

and

stopped the company from destroying the last

unspoiled

birthing ground of the Pacific gray whale.

 

We'll win this time too if each of us does our part

for the

Arctic Refuge. Please visit

http://www.savebiogems.org/arctic right now. And

forward my

message to your family, friends and colleagues.

Congress

cannot ignore millions of us.

 

If we let them plunder our greatest wildlife refuge

for the

sake of oil company profits, then no piece of our

natural

heritage is safe from destruction. Please go to

http://www.savebiogems.org/arctic and help keep the

Arctic

wild and free.

 

Sincerely yours,

Robert Redford