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.
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