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Article Dans Une Revue Dynamiques Environnementales - Journal international des géosciences et de l’environnement Année : 2016

Drill, Baby, Drill ! The American Right and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

Drill, Baby, Drill ! La Droite américaine et l’Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

Résumé

This article analyzes the attitudes of American conservatives and libertarians with regard to federal conservationist policies in the United States, taking the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in Alaska as a case study. ANWR is a huge tract of land located in the northeastern part of Alaska. Since 1960 it has enjoyed wilderness status, that is to say, the highest degree of protection for federal lands in the United States. Its size was vastly increased when Congress passed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) in 1980. Since then, the 1002 area, which is located in the northern part of the Refuge and which contains large reserves of petroleum, has become a major bone of contention pitting environmentalists against free-marketers. The former want the Refuge to remain inviolate whilst the latter push for the immediate opening of the 1002 area to oil drilling. This article sheds light on the reasons for the positions held by the American Right, and moreover looks at its implications for federally preserved areas in the United States by examining the publications on ANWR by the main conservative and libertarian think tanks which have developed a genuine interest in this issue. Since the 1970s, various think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, have often been financed by well-heeled corporate interests and have acted as the ideological arsenal of the American Right on all topics which US elected officials can be expected to discuss. In the specific case of ANWR, as in many others, conservative and libertarian think tanks provide Republican members of Congress, and some Alaska Democrats, with economic, technical, and scientific arguments to justify opening the Refuge. Opening the Refuge is not the free-marketers’ only priority: they also intend to call into question the justification for federal interventionism by calling for an end to environmental regulations and the almost total privatization of federally-owned lands. In point of fact, the repeated attempts made by the American Right to bring about the opening of ANWR to oil drilling ought to be understood in the larger context of the conservative backlash against the regulatory apparatus spawned by Congress (Clean Air Acts, Clean Waters Acts, National Environmental Policy Act…) and the Executive Branch (Environmental Protection Agency) during the two decades prior to Ronald Reagan’s election to the presidency in 1980. Through the use of think tanks and political lobbying, some powerful corporate and ideological interests are trying, in the name of free enterprise to undermine, if not do away with, the regulations, standards, and constraints imposed by the federal government on economic activities. The sheer strength of the so-called climate denial movement in the United States bears testimony to the intentions and determination of the critics of the regulatory state. From their perspective, the notion that oil reserves be outside the purview of commercial exploitation makes no economic sense. As environmentalists have elected to turn ANWR into a litmus test for the defence of the entire US preservationist system, this controversy has become a cause célèbre that crystallizes the ideological showdown between freemarketers and environmentalists. This article does not just concern itself with the economic dimension of the controversy. In addition to the economic analysis, it probes into the meaning ascribed to technological progress by the proponents of oil drilling in ANWR. Their rhetoric appears to support the framework of the technological society as described by French philosopher Jacques Ellul: all resources that can be exploited technologically have to be exploited. The American preservationist ideal, which came into being in the second half of the 19th century, hinges on the idea that exceptions must be imposed to the domination of technology over the world. Although they do not lay out a radical critique of the technological society, the preservationists do demand that certain exceptional places be exempted from the drive for maximum efficiency that informs the technological society. They usually rest their case on aesthetic, spiritual, or cultural arguments. By discarding the preservationist rationale fundamentally and completely, the conservative proponents of the opening of ANWR have come to epitomise the technological ethos. In so doing, they are jeopardizing the American legacy of preservation as a whole.
Cet article a pour objectif d’analyser les attitudes des conservateurs et des libertariens américains à l’égard des politiques publiques de protection de l’environnement aux États-Unis en étudiant particulièrement le cas de l’Arctic National Wildlife Refuge en Alaska. La défense de ce gigantesque refuge est devenue une source de tensions entre les environnementalistes et les partisans du marché libre. Cet article se propose de déconstruire l’origine de la position de la Droite américaine, et surtout d’en examiner les implications pour les zones protégées aux États-Unis, en utilisant les publications et les prises de position publiques des principaux think tanks conservateurs et libertariens, très actifs sur ces questions. Les partisans de l’ouverture du refuge à l’exploitation pétrolière ne cherchent pas seulement à ouvrir le refuge ; ils entendent surtout remettre en cause le bien-fondé de l’intervention de l’État fédéral en plaidant pour la suppression des régulations environnementales et la privatisation quasi-totale du domaine public. D’autre part, leur argumentaire semble s’inscrire dans le cadre et l’esprit de la société technicienne telle que l’a décrite Jacques Ellul : tout ce qui peut être exploité par le biais de la technique doit l’être.

Dates et versions

halshs-01719511 , version 1 (28-02-2018)

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Jean-Daniel Collomb. Drill, Baby, Drill ! The American Right and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Dynamiques Environnementales - Journal international des géosciences et de l’environnement, 2016, Les espaces naturels protégés sont-ils nécessaires ?, 35, pp.58-75. ⟨10.4000/dynenviron.1112⟩. ⟨halshs-01719511⟩

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