A frosty talk with a not-very-environmentalist bus driver...God save America...and the whales

It was one of those John Frost mornings. The gentle snow flakes knocked at your eyes and trickled down your neck. There you were shivering at a gas station, turned bus stop, with the twang of country music ringing your ears. That’s a logical place for a bus stop, you think, because this is U.S.A., land of the free and of cars. Cars to get to work. Cars to go to the gymnasium. Cars and super-highways to settle your mind. Or disturb it.

But once in a while, a bus does come in handy…There it is! The flashing “God Bless America” sign comes into view almost before the vehicle itself. You get on, settle down for a long ride along Pennsylvania’s western highways. You’re the only one on board, so you propose a chat with the middle aged bespectacled driver.

“looks a bit bleak out.”
“You might say so.”
“Like the economy.”
“I don’t know. The mass media is always stirring up something.”
“Well, oil is hitting the $100 mark.”
“You know what the problem is?”
“Well, I don’t know, but when oil goes up everyone seems to go bananas.”
“Thing is, those environmentalists won’t let the companies drill?”
“You mean for fear of contamination, ecological disaster, the warming up of the planet?”
“Yea, you said it! But why in the Hell should we pull our hair out when countries like China and India don’t give a whit about contamination?”
“I guess you got a point there.”
“The whole economy is based on petroleum and those nuts want us to strop drilling! That’s completely crazy.”
“Hmmm.”
“And then we have to go to place like Iraq to make sure we get oil.”
“hmmm.”
“There’s enough in Alaska for the next 200 years! All this talk about alternative energy is but chatter ‘cause even to get electricity we need oil. You can’t just drop oil. The whole world would collapse.”

The conversation came to an abrupt halt when a group of passengers get on at Alfred. It’s not cool to chat with the driver when too many ears are on board, so you pick up a magazine, the January edition of “The Progressive,” and read:

“According to some estimates, as much as 25 percent of the plante’s remaining petroleum reserves are in the Artic. The U.S. portions of the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas lie atop 23.6 billion barrels of oil, according to Petroleum News.

The article then mentions Isac Nukapigak is the president of Kuukpik, the native corporation at Nuiqsut, and then asserts:

“When ConocoPhillips wanted to put the Alpine field into production, it needed to use a portion of Kuukpik’s lands to do so. Nukapigak drove a hard bargain, nd as a result, the village corporation is flourishing. Yet he’s far from easy about the prospect of more oil leases in the waters he and his whaling crews hunt each year.”

The native residents and environmentalists are concerned about possible oil spills that could devastate the whale population—the livelihood of the population in the area. The seismic prospecting that oil companies need to determine where to drill creates loud underwater sounds that are problematic for all marine mammals. Thirty percent of the native Inupiat diet consists of mammals, another 30% fish…

Everyone in the area remembers the Exxon Valdez disaster at Prince William Sound, a spill that so devastated the lives of commercial fishermen that many have not yet rebound.

Nukapigak asks a question which neither the oil companies nor the Shortline bus driver, nor middle America dare utter: “Are we part of the U.S.? Are we citizens? Or because we are natives are we just brushed away?”

A great trip, you mutter into your beard as you step off the bus and into New York City’s slushy streets, pick up The New York Times and learn that the war in Iraq is likely to last at least another presidency and who knows how high the price of oil is going to reach and the stock market is still jittering and would it be better to reduce interest rates or...