Alaska's Challenge to the Imagination

• Author: Oliver Houck
• Position: Professor of Law at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana
• Pages: 6-7

Page 6 ❧ THE ENVIRONMENTAL FORUM Copyright © 2011, Environmental Law Institute®, Washington, D.C. www.eli.org.

Reprinted by permission from The Environmental Forum®, July/August 2011

Project Chariot seemed an

excellent idea. e Atomic

Energy Commission would

detonate an atomic bomb

100 times more powerful

than the one dropped on Hiroshima

in the Alaskan arctic, at a place named

Ogotoruk Creek, around which the

agency would withdraw 1,600 square

miles of land and water, just to be safe.

e blast would create a deep water port

for shipping coal and oil reser ves from

the North Slope. With the exception of

the native Americans who lived there,

primarily the Gwich’in, and whose

creation story was linked to Arctic cari-

bou, there was little protest

from Alaskans. As for the

Gwich’in people, father-of-

the-H-bomb Edward Teller

declared that “when we have

the harbor we can create coal

mines in the Arctic and they

can become coal miners.”

e project met unex-

pected blowback in the lower

forty-eight. Rising conserva-

tion organizations called it

“the worst idea yet conceived

by mankind.” Albert Einstein

called it “lunacy.” Congres-

sional hearings were held.

e commission began to crawf‌ish.

Further study was needed. e project

quietly died. And so here, in miniature,

another piece of the rich and tumultu-

ous conservation history of Alaska had

played out, a remote but highly sym-

bolic battle between the forces of ex-

ploitation and those with a completely

dif‌ferent view of life. Douglas Brinkley’s

e Quiet World: Saving Alaska’s Wilder-

ness Kingdom, 1879-1960 documents

this struggle up to a watershed moment

f‌ifty years ago, the creation of the Arctic

National Wildlife Refuge. His is an am-

bitious undertaking, more so because

he sweeps within it a history of the

American conservation movement.

It is hard to overstate Alaska. Imag-

ine sheer survival in a land with fero-

cious climate swings, rain-forest lev-

els of precipitation on the coasts, and

biting insects (more than 300 species

of mosquitoes alone), none so vicious

as the black f‌ly whose venom can kill

humans by toxic shock (I have had

my eyes sealed shut by them and my

hands reduced to sausages), and whose

swarms control animal migrations.

Alaska’s greatest challenge, however, is

to the imagination.

Suppose for a moment that we

could rediscover America and the entire

continent was packed into one 500,000

square mile peninsula, the mountains

more rugged, the glaciers dwarf‌ing,

great torrents of water rushing toward

immense deltas, primeval forests, unex-

ploited minerals, miles-long rafts of sea

mammals, migrating herds rivaling the

buf‌falo, open tundra, wildf‌lowers to

the horizon, wildfowl without number,

everything without number. No way to

extinguish it. Not even to dent it. Imag-

ine that we could do America all over

again, would we do it any dif‌ferently?

at is the root question of Alaska.

Brinkley broaches his subject

through heroes, whom he describes in

detail and lauds for their contributions

to the American scene and to Alaska

in particular. ey were in fact heroes,

larger than life f‌igures whose vision,

personalities, descriptive powers, and

ability to get things done may be with-

out equal save for the equally impres-

sive range of industrial magnates of the

Gilded Age — but for one important

dimension, their personal bravery, sense

of adventure, and moral values that

transcended money and have therefore

always been threatening to those who

measure life by bank accounts. John

Muir is his lead example.

is will be new to most of us,

for whom Muir is almost exclusively

known for his work in the High Sierras

of California. How many of us knew

that Muir traveled extensively to Alaska

in the early 1880s, with the seminal gla-

ciers study of Harvard’s Luis Aggasiz in

hand, and found himself in a

landscape of snow, ice, peaks,

rivers, and f‌lowered valleys,

“embosomed in scenery . . .

hopelessly beyond descrip-

tion”? is from perhaps the

most eloquent describer of

nature ever to walk the earth.

Muir became the foremost

glaciologist of his time, and

an early advocate for Alaska.

“Go . . . go . . . go to Alaska,”

he would write. Few did, but

they were important.

Muir then joined a voyage

of exploration organized by

railroad tycoon E. H. Harriman, com-

posed of some f‌ifty scientists in every

relevant discipline, a sort of Lewis-and-

Clark-cum-John-Wesley-Powell expe-

dition that produced an eye-opening

report of the territory’s resources, and

their rapid despoliation. Seal, sea otter,

walrus, and other creatures had been

pushed to extinction. e f‌isheries were

also going south, as would soon be the

case for bear and moose. e gold rush,

with some 30,000 miners a year pour-

ing in, had laid waste to every place it

touched, as it had in California. Even

at that time the timber was falling with-

The Quiet World: Saving

Alaska’s Wilderness

Kingdom, 1879-1960. By

Douglas Brinkley. Harper;

$29.99.

IN THE LITERATURE

Alaska’s Challenge to the Imagination

By Oliver Houck