[ed. I'm not sure this is of interest to anyone but me, but it's the professional environment I worked in for over 30 years. One of my first projects involved advocating for nearshore seasonal drilling restrictions and protections around Teshekpuk Lake, back in 1980. I've met Mr. Babbitt. It is a long game for sure, and to the extent there are professionals on both sides of the conservation/development debate who negotiate these issues with integrity and good faith, cyclical politics and the type of careerism described in this article are why so much dysfunction exists in the system.]
From his seat in the small plane flying over the largest remaining swath of American wilderness, Bruce Babbitt thought he could envision the legacy of one of his proudest achievements as Interior Secretary in the Clinton administration.
Babbitt was returning in the summer of 2013 from four sunlit nights in Alaska’s western Arctic, where at one point his camp was nearly overrun by a herd of caribou that split around the tents at the last minute. Now, below him, Babbitt saw an oil field — one carefully built and operated to avoid permanent and other scars on the vast expanse of tundra and lakes.
Under the deal he’d negotiated just before leaving Interior in 2000, that would be the only kind of drilling he thought would be allowed in the 23 million acres of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, which, despite its name, is a pristine region home to one of the world’s largest caribou herds and giant flocks of migratory birds. The compromise was fair and, he hoped, enduring — clear-eyed about the need for more domestic oil but resolute in defense of the wilderness.
The deal lasted barely 15 years.
In February, the Obama administration granted the ConocoPhillips oil company the right to drill in the reserve. The Greater Mooses Tooth project, as it is known, upended the protections that Babbitt had engineered, saving the oil company tens of millions and setting what conservationists see as a foreboding precedent.
How ConocoPhillips overcame years of resistance from courts, native Alaskans, environmental groups and several federal agencies is the story of how Washington really works. It is a story that surprised even a veteran of the political machine like Babbitt.
As environmentalists, energy companies and politicians brawled over big symbols like the Keystone pipeline and offshore drilling in the Arctic Ocean, the more immediate battles over climate change and fossil fuels were being waged over projects like Greater Mooses Tooth — out of the public eye, away from the cable-news shout-fests and White House protests.
The fight was unfolding in the real Washington — where influence accrues across election cycles almost without regard to who’s in power. In this Washington, companies bend decisions of major import in their direction by overwhelming a bureaucracy that, after years of budget cuts, outsourcing and inattention, lacks the resources and morale to hold its own. Increasingly, industry spins the revolving door. It brings in people who learn there’s serious money to be made after leaving government jobs, by sticking around the capital and making it their career.
Big industries like oil play Washington as a long game, exhibiting a persistence too often lacking in the people in charge of safeguarding the public good. And to win the long game, to push ahead on frontiers like Greater Mooses Tooth, you need someone who is a real player.
by Alec MacGillis, ProPublica | Read more:
Image:Al Grillo/AP
From his seat in the small plane flying over the largest remaining swath of American wilderness, Bruce Babbitt thought he could envision the legacy of one of his proudest achievements as Interior Secretary in the Clinton administration.
Babbitt was returning in the summer of 2013 from four sunlit nights in Alaska’s western Arctic, where at one point his camp was nearly overrun by a herd of caribou that split around the tents at the last minute. Now, below him, Babbitt saw an oil field — one carefully built and operated to avoid permanent and other scars on the vast expanse of tundra and lakes.Under the deal he’d negotiated just before leaving Interior in 2000, that would be the only kind of drilling he thought would be allowed in the 23 million acres of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, which, despite its name, is a pristine region home to one of the world’s largest caribou herds and giant flocks of migratory birds. The compromise was fair and, he hoped, enduring — clear-eyed about the need for more domestic oil but resolute in defense of the wilderness.
The deal lasted barely 15 years.
In February, the Obama administration granted the ConocoPhillips oil company the right to drill in the reserve. The Greater Mooses Tooth project, as it is known, upended the protections that Babbitt had engineered, saving the oil company tens of millions and setting what conservationists see as a foreboding precedent.
How ConocoPhillips overcame years of resistance from courts, native Alaskans, environmental groups and several federal agencies is the story of how Washington really works. It is a story that surprised even a veteran of the political machine like Babbitt.
As environmentalists, energy companies and politicians brawled over big symbols like the Keystone pipeline and offshore drilling in the Arctic Ocean, the more immediate battles over climate change and fossil fuels were being waged over projects like Greater Mooses Tooth — out of the public eye, away from the cable-news shout-fests and White House protests.
The fight was unfolding in the real Washington — where influence accrues across election cycles almost without regard to who’s in power. In this Washington, companies bend decisions of major import in their direction by overwhelming a bureaucracy that, after years of budget cuts, outsourcing and inattention, lacks the resources and morale to hold its own. Increasingly, industry spins the revolving door. It brings in people who learn there’s serious money to be made after leaving government jobs, by sticking around the capital and making it their career.
Big industries like oil play Washington as a long game, exhibiting a persistence too often lacking in the people in charge of safeguarding the public good. And to win the long game, to push ahead on frontiers like Greater Mooses Tooth, you need someone who is a real player.
by Alec MacGillis, ProPublica | Read more:
Image:Al Grillo/AP
