"Alaska Sustainable Energy Conference" Features Zeldin, Burgrum, Whining About How Oppressed Alaska Is

The Department of the Interior announced a proposal last week to cancel its protections of 13 million acres of Alaskan land inside a previously created reserve. More than 40 Indigenous communities rely on the acreage in question for clean water and critical subsistence resources like caribou, fish and other wildlife. Indigenous people have occupied the lands inside the reserve for millennia. Protected public lands have grown increasingly important at a time when changing climate conditions have destabilized life in the Arctic.

The announcement came last week as the state’s Republican governor, Mike Dunleavy, headed up the Alaska Sustainable Energy Conference in Anchorage. He was joined by Energy Secretary Chris Wright, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin. The federal officials spent days touring Alaska, including visiting the North Slope, where much of Alaska’s drilling and mining is focused.

While some communities appreciated the cabinet members’ visit to the Arctic and the economic opportunities that increased resource extraction may bring, others worry about the negative effects it could have on their lives and livelihoods. “ They want to come in and create pipelines and drill and mine and extract and log. We are the ones who will be most greatly impacted,” said Rochelle Adams, director of the Yukon River Protectors, an Indigenous nonprofit organization. “ We’re gonna have the health impacts, and we’re gonna have the medical costs and responsibilities, and we’re going to have bury our loved ones.”

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From this perch, (Gov. Mike Dunleavy) joined other Republican speakers emphasizing party slogans, including “Make Alaska great again” and “unleashing energy dominance,” and referred to President Donald Trump’s executive order on Alaska energy from January, in which he promised to “immediately reverse” the Biden administration’s restrictions. “We were sanctioning Alaska more than we were sanctioning Iran,” said Burgum. In a large ballroom with hundreds of attendees, Trump’s cabinet members condemned Biden’s conservation efforts and promised rural Alaskans more energy, jobs and infrastructure.

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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/14062025/trump-interior-department-pushes-proposal-rescinding-arctic-protections/