Jimmy Carter asks court to defend Alaska’s ‘unrivaled wilderness’ | Hacker News Reader

Jimmy Carter asks court to defend Alaska’s ‘unrivaled wilderness’

alaskapublic.org

194 points1vuio0pswjnm7162 comments

Yes the resident logic is a bait and switch for further developments. Wilderness should stay wild. Leave it as is and do nothing. It's amazing how many powerful politicians and obviously lobbied individuals keep trying to change that.

The residents in this particular area have been complaining for 30+ years (somewhat loudly) to the Alaskan government that they don't have access to basic commerce. There's no road! Jimmy Carter doesn't want to build a road to meet these people?

Blaming “politicians” is a canard. People in Alaska want to develop their land for the same reason people in New York and California did—for economic development and jobs. If other folks value the wilderness so much, they should pay folks in Alaska not to develop their land.

The land in question belongs to the federal government*... we already pay them not to develop it, with taxes!

*: subject to the land swap, which Carter argues is illegal

> If other folks value the wilderness so much, they should pay folks in Alaska not to develop their land.

We did.

Congress used our tax dollars to purchase Alaska and then later on carved out part of that purchase as this reserve. It is in no way more their land than it is the New Yorker’s or the Californian’s.

Wasn’t California purchased from Mexico? According to this logic, the only people that truly own land to develop as they please are those that own property in areas that were seized from Indians without compensation like the original East Coast states.

More like, the national parks in California that are owned by the federal government aren’t free to be developed on. Again the Alaskans don’t want to develop their own land. They want to develop on the land that is jointly owned and that the rest of society wants to have remain undeveloped.

When you don’t have sole ownership of a piece of property you don’t have sole say in its use. I am sorry that’s Alaskans feel upset that they don’t have the right to use our property as they see fit

> People in Alaska want to develop their land

In many cases, the "people" who want to develop things are actually not people but rather businesses or agents of businesses.

Go to rural or remote places which have been upgraded and you will find locals lamenting about the changes which invited industry. Many people like their environment undisturbed.

Businesses are just groups of people doing stuff, that hire people to do stuff and sell stuff to people. And you can go into San Francisco and find plenty of people who don’t want Silicon Valley businesses in the city, or people who complain about how NYC has become gentrified. But I bet if you took a vote “should tech companies all leave San Francisco for Texas” or “should NYC go back to the way it was in the 70s” that would be a land slide against losing those businesses.

Yes, but Businesses are very clearly not the antecedent of the "they" you used upthread to reference "Alaskans". You can't make a nativist argument about the rights of the local population and then try to extend that to a Texas-based petro-behemoth wanting to drill new holes.

There’s tons of people who want those “Texas based petro behemoths” to “drill new holes” for the exact same reasons folks want San Francisco based ad behemoths to build offices in their city.

And there's "tons" that don't, aren't there? So... maybe we should do this democratically and let the elected government decide what happens with federal land and not resort to this kind of "who matters more" nonsense?

Most people would say that they should have more say about jobs versus community trade offs in their local area than folks somewhere else. It’s only due to accidents of history that New Yorkers can veto economic development in Alaska in a way Alaskans can’t do with New York. Not just due to numbers but due to the historical development of the relevant property rights.

> in Alaska in a way Alaskans can’t do with New York

This is wildly incorrect. Alaskans have vastly higher relative representation in the federal government than New Yorkers, and it really isn't close. It's something like 3x as many house/senate votes per capita!

It's just not absolute. New Yorker are Americans, just like Alaskans, and so New Yorkers get a say about what to do with American resources like federal wilderness areas, just like Alaskans get a say with how to regulate New York guns shops, medical procedures or tax rates.

We call that "democracy", and while it's currently sorta falling apart in this country (due in no small part to the kind of absolutist arguments being deployed right here in this subthread) it's the best scheme we've picked. People really need to start finding ways to live with it instead of burning everything down.

That's true to a degree, but there's always the not-in-my-back-yard condition.

I got to see this first hand during the Barnette Shale gas drilling boom in the mid-2000s. As Texas, particularly the DFW area was very pro-oil&gas, many people were very much in favor of fracking and the possibilities it opened up.

Many of those people stopped being in favor once actual wells appeared in their neighborhoods. At one point I could see five different wells from the second floor of my suburban home. Their noise was audible all the time, and our roads became clogged with heavy trucks delivering liquids and materials necessary for the fracking process. Oh, our roads got destroyed rapidly from those trucks as well.

The few landowners who got lucrative mineral lease deals were very happy, but "the people" living all around were definitely not happy. So a small few individuals profited well, a few oil and gas companies profited very well, and the general population suffered.

That was even before the earthquakes started.

Keep in mind also that "the people" are generally speaking rather like sheep -- not stupid necessarily, but given to following the herd. "Everybody knows" that Texas is an oil state, so it's only natural that you will be in favor of the industry your state is famous for. To go against that means you no longer fit with your neighbors, colleagues, church members, sometimes even your family (if you're from Texas you probably have a cousin who works in the industry) etc.

However, after negative outcomes appear too often or too clearly, the concept of "the people" fractures. I can't speak for the SF folks, but I would bet that there are quite some strong differences of opinion amongst them, just as there are people living in nature who are very opposed to development around them.

Just to be clear, your claim is that because businesses would be happy to be gifted public resources for their own private profit, therefore generic “people” would like it because businesses = groups of people?

And you think “gentrification” (i.e. private sale/renting of private property in low-income neighborhoods to yuppies) is essentially the same as the President unilaterally deciding to sell part of a congressionally established National Wildlife Refuge to land developers, because you can find someone unhappy with either one?

No, my point is that businesses developing undeveloped land creates profits for businesses but also jobs and economic activity for the local community. And while some people don’t want that economic activity to happen—just like they don’t want Silicon Valley workers moving into San Francisco—most of the community is happy to have the money coming in.

The distinction you’re pointing to—federal versus private ownership, is both inaccurate and irrelevant. Nobody is “gifted” anything—the federal government leases or sells the land. And from the perspective of the local community the distinction doesn’t make a difference. They care about the economic development, not the legal particulars of the property rights. The legal particulars also don’t matter to the conservationists—their objection isn’t the price that the government is getting for these leases.

Lots of things “create jobs and economic activity” (for at least someone, in the short term): Ponzi schemes. Mob protection rackets. Dumping untreated toxic sludge in the local river. Burning down the rainforest and replacing it with palm oil plantations and cattle ranches. Establishing a pharmaceutical monopoly and then jacking the price up by 1000%. Opening child-labor sweatshops. Prostitution of sex-trafficked slaves. Kidnapping for ransom. Medical research on unwilling human test subjects. Child porn production. Black-market organ sales. Judges conspiring with for-profit prison companies to send innocent people to jail. Selling small arms to mass-murdering foreign paramilitary groups...

Hand-waving away all of the details because you think “jobs” outweigh “the legal particulars” is a free pass to support pretty much anything you personally prefer (or personally profit from), irrespective of its harms.

I’m sure it would create a lot of short term jobs if we leased Yellowstone to the Disney company to develop into a theme park. But “maximizing short-term local economic development” is not how we make decisions about what to do with congressionally established nature preserves.

Jimmy's a good man. We need more like him.

Why is he a good man?

His work on Habitat for Humanity, for one. It's not virtue signalling for Jimmy, he's out there swinging a hammer alongside everyone else. His work in ensuring fair elections in various countries, for another.

And the work of the Carter Center to eradicate Guinea worm. The number of cases each year used to be in the millions. The number of cases so far this year is just 2.

Agreed. He works hard to make the world a better place.

It ain't too late yet for him to do a second term. He doesn't strike me as the sort of person who'd want one - he seems to be doing a fine job as an ex-President - but I'd vote for him in a heartbeat over the average politician.

> It ain't too late yet for him to do a second term.

He's going to be 100 years old in 2024. [1] If that's not too old for being a president, we might as well elect dead men.

Given our decadence, that would significantly increase the quality of average politician.

[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Carter

Most Presidents would do a better job by doing nothing.

He’s a good man, and has done good things in his post presidency, but was a mediocre to lousy president.

Probably just slightly better than the current and previous office holders.

The last thing we need in this world it the worlds most powerful man being a full century old and inheriting an economy that is only slightly worse than the one he left us with when he was 55.

For one, he is still trying to protect the Alaskan wilderness

Looking at google maps, there's a ferry about 30 mile ride on the water.

I don't know the route they're proposing, but maybe 60 miles over mountains. Ugh. The ambulance isn't going to be going 60 over washboard roads.

The good people of Alaska can do whatever they want, but if the concern is medical emergencies, they should seriously consider keeping a plane at the airport, illuminate the airport, and make sure the runway stays plowed. Anchorage is about 900 miles away. A helicopter ride over to cold bay, then on a plane to Anchorage might be easier if they can keep a pilots on hand.

Actually there's a bunch of really small, really remote communities up there. helicopter service to cold bay, plane to the trauma center might be a really good plan.

We built an interstate across an entire mountain range. Just because a road goes over a mountain does mean it can’t be easily possible at highway speeds.

Well, sure. but they're looking to put in a gravel road. king cove, population 757. I think you'd want a road grader to start, I don't see a quarry on the map, but maybe there's one near by. You could also move a rock crusher up there. I mean, it's fine, but gravel roads are kind of a pain. you have to keep adding more, year after year. I mean, you could pave it, but asphalt doesn't like freezing and thawing over and over. But sure, a good road could be built.

If they're concerned about emergency services - Anchorage seems like the closest trauma center. 900 miles away. Maintain the airport and keep a plane there. Screwing around with an hour drive before getting to a plane seems like the kind of plan that won't really help much if you need emergency services.

They want to connect to an all weather airport which would let them get to the trauma center more quickly and of course do other stuff.

The issue isn’t this specific road, it’s every other time someone wants to go through a wildlife refuge.

The people of Alaska can't actually do what they want. Every attempt to develop resources is stopped by people that dont live in the state screaming about protecting the wilderness.

It’s a national park paid for with national tax dollars. The Alaskans don’t have a greater claim to it due to their proximity.

What they actually want to do is use our property to support their lifestyle. It should not be surprising that others have a problem with that

Looking at Google Maps, it seems to be completely unnecessary to go through the INWR. The road could simply go one mile to the northwest, which isn't part of the refuge. I must be reading it wrong?

Also, you could make the ferry ride about half as long if you start on the other side of the peninsula from King Cove (only need two miles of road!).

Congress wrote a review in 2015 that assessed the possibilities for a helicopter and a ferry:

https://www.energy.senate.gov/services/files/D8EA08E9-75F1-4...

>The good people of Alaska can do whatever they want, but if the concern is medical emergencies, they should seriously consider keeping a plane at the airport, illuminate the airport, and make sure the runway stays plowed. Anchorage is about 900 miles away. A helicopter ride over to cold bay, then on a plane to Anchorage might be easier if they can keep a pilots on hand.

The issue is they can't get there.. the airport is already all weather.

I was unclear. Make the airport in king cove all weather. 4 miles out of town.

That’s vastly more expensive than the road. But this court case has also strayed well past being just about this specific road.

Is it? Lights, transponders, and equipment to keep the runway free from snow.

let's assume $5.00/sq ft to lay down gravel - 5280 ft/mi * 60mi * 10ft wide road is about 3 million. That's pretty generous given the remote location, need to ship the heavy equipment.

I really don't know, but you could dodge a lot of lawsuits and shave an hour off of time to trauma center. Which, as I understand it, is the real goal. get hurt people to treatment as quickly as possible.

They would also need to seriously improve the runway to land in extreme wind conditions not just add ILS equipment. I don’t know what exactly is needed, but a single short gravel runway is a long way from being sufficient.

Next is the question of maintenance, if you actually want to save an hour the runway would need to be kept clear 24/7 which is expensive. Alternatively, they can start clearing the runway after the emergency which costs less money but more time. On the other hand a gravel road should be passable via off-road vehicle or snowmobile with minimal effort. Over say 30 years the road might be the clear winner.

spend a million dollars teaching the five folks on the volunteer fire department how to fly a helicopter. Spend another million on a helicopter. Spend another million upgrading the airport. Quick trip to cold bay, then off to Anchorage.

I mean, like, peoples lives are at stake. Speed wins every single time. the longer someone goes without treatment, the less chance they have at survival. And that's the root question here. Access to emergency services. It's a solvable problem.

Can 1 million dollar helicopters fly in all weather conditions?

here's a used one for 1.5 https://www.controller.com/listings/for-sale/airbus/h225/air...

I'm sure if you poke around you could find a better deal.

but the reality is, it's 30 miles by boat - even if they build the road people are always going to take the boat, because it's always going to be faster.

Few boats can do anything close to 30 MPH, especially in conditions bad enough to close down their existing airport.

That ferry route is serviced by the Alaska Marine Highway System at most once a week during the summer. But, it is a whistle stop. The ferry only stops if there are reservations.

Read Carter's amicus brief

https://www.cartercenter.org/resources/pdfs/amicus-brief-jim...

Carter's argument: Regardless of any facts surrounding the purpose of a road, the 1980 ANILCA did not authorise (Trump's) Secretary of the Interior to review and permit development in refuges on an ad-hoc basis, via section 2192(h)(1) land exchanges. A majority of a three-member panel of the Court of Appeals got it wrong. The Court needs to reconvene, en banc.

"But the decision of the panel majority in this case rests on a grave misunderstanding of the fundamentals of this vital law. In enacting ANILCA, Congress did not, as the decision concluded, vest the Secretary with discretion to decide whether lands like the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge should be retained in their natural state or whether the economic and social benefits of road-building or other development outweigh the ecological and subsistence harms that such activities would inflict.

That is precisely what ANILCA disallowed when it expressly designated particular lands for conservation and subsistence, legislative decisions that carry corresponding, enduring protections. Those designations were not based on the assumption that these lands lacked economic value. Just the opposite: ANILCAs framers and supporters knew there would forever be claims, often advanced by organized and well-financed interests, that they should be put to immediate use for local economic development and other purposes. Valuable benefits to the Nation as a whole, to subsistence users, and to future generations would fare poorly in an ad hoc balancing."

Carter is 97 years old.

One wonders how the judges misinterpreted it.

First of all they’re going to read the legislative history and understand that Carter’s brief is definitely putting a spin on what happened: https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2022/03/16/2.... Pp. 14-15.

The amicus brief immediately raised alarm bells on first reading, suggesting that Congress didn’t intend the Secretary to consider economic values. Congress basically never does that in an environmental law. They are always a compromise that requires balancing conservation goals with economic needs.

That’s true especially in this context, where native land is at issue.

More reading about former Trump Administration Secretary of Interior Zincke and Bernhardt's attempts to misuse of ANILCA 1302(h)

Summary

https://leftcoast.mofo.com/topics/This-Week-at-The-Ninth-Mar...

https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/2021/02/the-izembek-refuge-road...

2019 District Court of Alaska opinion

https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/public_lands/pd...

Secretary Zinke's 2018 Land Swap Set Aside for APA Violation

https://casetext.com/case/friends-of-alaska-natl-wildlife-re...

Secretary Bernhardt's 2019 Land Swap Set Aside for APA Violation

https://casetext.com/case/friends-of-alaska-natl-wildlife-re...

DOJ's Opening Brief on Appeal

https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/legaldocs/klvykeqnqvg/...

9th Circuit Decision (See Justice Wardlaw's dissent)

https://casetext.com/case/friends-of-alaska-national-wildlif...

Friends of ANWR Petition for Rehearing En Banc

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lwQRwznwLpoS6geNpPyP5lmiQHJ...

Administrative and Natural Resources Law Professors Amicus Brief

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yFsg0bWStMhWLsBBt_cff0CwHds...

Former Secretary Babbitt and former Interior Solicitor Leshy Amicus Brief

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5c2a3500f793923866cf1...

Does anyone remember Carter recommending coal as an environmenally friendly strategy during the 70's energy crisis. And the late Senator Tsongas (RIP) opposing Carter on domestic oil strategies. Eventually they worked together on ANILCA.

In rural Northern California and across the continental USA there are huge, huge areas, including populated places, without local medical services. "medically underserved" is the google keyword. Read two or three public health research papers and you will quickly find that there are already roads, but no doctors, mainly due to the economics of American health care.

My parents had a penchant for living remote. Its all fun and games until you need a humvee to crash thru snow to take you to the hospital.

ok well my ex-neighbor pulled her own tooth while isolated on a property down a dirt road. I am not new to this. This is a political cover to build infrastructure. I suggest you read Jimmy Carter's letter and we can all discuss it together.

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Beyond the validity of the legal arguments, I wonder about the second-order impacts if this goes through.

For one thing I'd imagine there's a significant amount of private land with negligible monetary value because it lacks transportation infrastructure and the legal rights to construct such infrastructure. If local communities can convince the state to build roads through national parks, refuges, and wilderness areas I'd imagine the private lands around those areas will hugely increase in value. I wonder if this will kick off a land rush and drive more development in these areas.

The downside of course is that the ecological value of these lands would plummet, since many animals that roam or hunt require uninterrupted contiguous areas.

I don't have much to add to this discussion, except that I went to Alaska a few weeks ago and I loved it. Looking as a tourist its easy to say that I would like to preserve as it is, but people living there might think entirely different.

What's up with all these old western Apparatchiks? You got Jimmy Carter at 97, his wife is 94. Henry Kissinger is 99. Do they all go to the same clinic?

Instead of fighting for the road to the airport they'd better fight for the electric VTOL - a way to get their air transport without violating the wilderness refuge.

Alaskan low density makes it a great place for the new technology to get tested in real use and have its early problems worked out.

eVTOL aren't anywhere near to being certified for commercial flight, and anyone telling you they are is a charlatan trying to cash out on investment fraud. I know because I worked for a semi well known eVTOL entrepreneur who continually facilitated an enterprise engaged in lying to customers that they would get an eVTOL in short order when in fact the FARs didn't even provide a path to certification.

>the FARs didn't even provide a path to certification

and that is the fight those people should spend their effort/money at.

You want a bunch of natives in a remote hamlet of Alaska to spend their time lobbying to change the FARs to enable deployment of experimental aircraft?

yep. Grassroot. The real people who need it.

Carter and Kissinger both got the live forever genes

It's the adrenochrome /s

'Adverse development' is the term they use for the King Cove community's road to access an airport for emergency medical services. A group of rural Americans need access to a critical resource. They aren't building an open-pit mine.

'Trustees for Alaska' seems to be another majority out-of-state funded greenie organization that prioritizes a twisted anti-human agenda where if they got their way, entire villages would be eliminated and all of the residents relocated to an urban center.

> entire villages would be eliminated

Entire towns have been relocated for the greater good. Some examples are to build dams and reservoirs. Butler, Tennessee. American Falls, Idaho.

Grand Coulee Dam forced the relocation of 3000 people.

So many others, like these:

https://www.uncharted101.com/the-submerged-towns-of-america/

> Some examples are to build dams and reservoirs.

Yeah, dams and reservoirs that obliterated not just those towns but any and all surrounding habitats - while also in many cases interfering with fish stocks/migration. "Greater good" indeed.

Maybe we should be tearing down those dams before quibbling over a gravel road.

> but any and all surrounding habitats

They also created new habitats.

For some reason I doubt the creation v. destruction works out in the favor of dams.

Atrocious to me that anybody would want to block that road. A mine? Sure. Logging? Yup. Oil exploration? Yeah. A gravel road to an airport in Alaska? Come on. I haven't lived in Rural Alaska in 20 years but I was born and raised in a fishing village. People in the lower 48 have no understanding of the vastness of Alaska and how small a concession this really is.

These specious environmental lawsuits are why no infrastructure has been built in this country in 40 years. We need to protect the wilds but a regulatory structure that allows vetos of a gravel road to the airport? What the hell.

> Atrocious to me that anybody would want to block that road.

Environmentalists are like “hold my beer.” I actually spent much of law school taking environmental law classes. There’s a lot of good work done by environmental organizations. But “regulation by litigation” is broken. Activist organizations are incentivized to pursue cases that tug the most on heart strings (“protecting pristine Alaska wilderness”) instead of those that best balance costs and benefits.

For those simply upvoting without reading the article, this case is more nuanced than the headline may sound:

> Residents in the community of King Cove want to exchange land to build a gravel road through the refuge to provide access to an all-weather airport in nearby Cold Bay for medical transports.

It's not about the residents of King Cove. BTW they've either been without that road for 40 years, or moved there knowing the situation.

It's about power and control if you go by this part:

“The split panel decision would allow the secretary, without any public process or without compliance with any other laws, to engage in a backroom land exchange,”

That's a pretty fucked up clause

45% of households in King Cove have children who had no choice in whether the road is there or not 40 years ago. It's hard to just blame them that "they knew the roads weren't there" when they were born thus they're not allowed roads to medical care the way I (and probably you) are.

I would sooner take the children away or force the residents to move than pave a road through the Alaskan wilderness.

I wouldn't do those things either, though. People get to choose where and how to raise their children. Children don't get a say so in virtually anything that affects them.

"Think of the children" is not a good argument.

Also the whole population is like 1200 people. We're talking about a relative handful of kids. Like one very small elementary school (edit: Google search says there's 87 kids in PK-12th grade. Combined.)

>BTW they've either been without that road for 40 years, or moved there knowing the situation.

Is patently false. It's not "think of the children." It's pointing out that statement was a vicious lie. I'm pointing out they've simply ignored the people who were born there.

We're talking about a road connecting two closest communities. You've said yourelf you wouldn't do the things to remove these residents from these communities. I would find it hypocritical for someone to take advantages of roads in their own community while denying this community a single road to the closest airport to the kind of medical services that those in the lower 48 can drive to (even if it takes them awhile).

We destroyed our local wilderness long time ago to make our lives safer and easier and more comfortable - and now we're judging others for wanting the same for their town...

Yes because we realise the mistakes

Rules for thee not for me.

Yes, that unfortunately tends to be the way of it.

People can do things until they can't, I don't know what you're claiming otherwise.

Then we should be leading by example. I know there's a lot more I could be doing to preserve and restore ecosystems local to me before I've any right to demand the same of folks thousands of miles away.

I'm kind of the guy you're directing this comment at, I think.

I bought 40 acres adjacent to national forest service land and I keep about 38 acres of it wild. I try to improve the forest and provide good habitat, and I've been rewarded with a lot of wildlife.

I've said in another comment, I'm an hour from a hospital.

I am both doing a lot for my local ecosystems, and also demanding that a national forest owned by the national government thousands of miles away be preserved as wild.

You can change the phrasing to attack the idea, but that's my idea as I intend it.

The people there can serve their own interests just fine. I think a whole lot of us can help keep wild places wild, and that's equally important as you working locally.

Do we even know what the locals think, by the way? Like actual normal people who live there? I would bet it's not a one-sided issue.

> I'm kind of the guy you're directing this comment at, I think.

I'm directing it at myself as much as anyone else. Like yeah, it's shitty that a gravel road could very well spiral into further ecological destruction and sprawl. It's also shitty to assume that it'll do so and use that assumption to actively hinder the quality of life for a community - especially when in all likelihood the vast majority of people wanting to impose such a hindrance do so from the comfort of lifestyles built upon far greater degrees of ecological destruction. It's great that you're making a positive difference (and if I had the funds to buy 40 acres of land I'd be thrilled to do something similar), but among those condemning a gravel road in a national forest, you're almost certainly the exception, not the rule - and even if I was such an exception, it still wouldn't be my place to judge them for that.

Put differently:

> Do we even know what the locals think, by the way? Like actual normal people who live there? I would bet it's not a one-sided issue.

No. We don't. That's exactly my point. Humans need to choose to be good stewards of the world they inherited. We lack the context, the moral high ground, and the ability to make that choice on anyone else's behalf.

> it still wouldn't be my place to judge them for that

> We lack the context, the moral high ground, and the ability to make that choice on anyone else's behalf.

I don't disagree with these sentiments. I feel the same.

But I don't think I'm deciding for them. I'm not part of the deciding body. I'm voicing my opinion in opposition, and in defense of our wild lands. We all have different motivations, and some of them are bad for our planet. I think it's fine to stand against them, and still accept the different viewpoint of others. I don't consider people with different opinions to be my enemies. Nearly every belief I can hold is disbelieved by another human, and that's okay--truly. I think we need to be experimenting with many ways of life.

Did we really? Just go around and see all those sterile lawns in front of houses, drowned in herbicides and fertilizers, wasting all that space that could be easily turned into gardens or beautiful meadows (you literally just have to leave it alone and it will happen on its own).

But we're pissed on others for wanting a single gravel road, so that they don't die if some emergency happens...

As the old Serbian saying goes: "it's easy to beat hawthorns with someone else's penis"...

Well, children are not even asked whether they want to be created, never mind where they want to be born.

> they've either been without that road for 40 years, or moved there knowing the situation.

It's a really weird argument, you're basically saying that people shouldn't be allowed to upgrade their infrastructure ever? Imagine saying that for some poor country: "Oh, well, they either had no running water before, or they knew the situation before moving there, so screw them, they can just continue walking 5 miles every day to bring water from the spring".

Also they've been without that road a lot longer than 40 years, King Cove exists since at least 1930s. Population is dropping so I doubt many people have been moving there, most of people live there their whole life....and if they get sick or injured and planes can't land, they're screwed without that road.

> people shouldn't be allowed to upgrade their infrastructure ever?

In a wilderness area? No.

Whole US were a wilderness once... you're basically punishing them for not destroying their nature earlier on, like the rest of us did...

We have to stop the destruction of the wilderness at some point, or we'll all die.

Wow, you should see a therapist.

Please consider visiting rural Alaska. It might be more vast than you imagine. Please consider there are people in this community who need access to a critical resource that you likely take for granted. This particular example isn't a good 'hill to die on'.

I would love to visit Alaska. I've wanted to ever since I read "On the Edge of Nowhere" as a boy.

I'm sure there are plenty of wonderful places to live in Alaska that have access to a hospital. If one chooses to live in a wilderness area with no road service, one accepts no road service.

It isn't unusual for elderly people to move to a place that is easier to maintain and is in close proximity to a hospital.

Absolutely, WE should do exactly that (and there's a plenty of things that we can do to protect nature around ourselves) - instead of living in hyper-urbanized cities and pissing online on people who actually live for a century or more in a real untouched wilderness and haven't destroyed it in all that time, and now want one stupid gravel road through that unimaginably wast area. It's a raindrop in the ocean, but people love to focus their energy on isolated, far-away problems, rather than tackling real problems and the wider image.

You make it sound like not being allowed a chocolate bar is a form of punishment

BTW, if I was President, you'd see a lot more land become federally protected wilderness in the lower 48. Marine areas, too. National parks would get much bigger. If you want to see that, write me in on your 2024 ballot!

A well connected, wealthy person with no real worries about their own access to medical professionals and no real roots in Alaska feigning to act for the good of nature but in the process acting against the interest of these communities? Say it aint so.

What does 97 year old Jimmy Carter have to gain from making a stand here?

I cannot come up with any motivations besides the guy actually just wants to protect the wild.

He grew up close to the land, so that makes sense to me.

He gets to look like he's saving the wilderness while denying advancement in access to medical care to majority native/Asian community.

Of course it's about race. Naturally he's a white supremacist. If they were white people he would be mowing down the trees himself.

Jimmy Carter grew up in Alaska? Never heard of that.

I can't find a single occurrence of "alaska" in his Wikipedia article. Got any ref?

Edit: I don't mind the downvote, but could someone explain if I missed something obvious?

"Close to the land" does not mean "close to that particular land."

Sorry for being obtuse, I genuinely don't get what that means. Don't almost every single person live close to the land?

Carter had a fairly rural upbringing.

Living "close to the land" means to be familiar and comfortable with, and reliant on, what "the land" (that is, nature) has to offer. The opposite of a city-dweller, basically.

> "the land" = nature

Thanks for your kind explanation. This is the part I didn't know.

In my defence, I did check the dictionary [1] but didn't find anything to suggest land means nature/rural/etc.

[1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/land#Noun

Read the comment again ... slowly -- mod has a dense writing style that may be difficult to comprehend on first reading. People can actually live "close to the land" all over the world. Farmers, for example. I think a few may even be found in Georgia.

The Alaskan wilderness belongs to all of us.

The people there are welcome to enjoy the wilderness. Not pave it.

King cove is almost 50% ethnically native, not to mention the rest of whom have have that as their home regardless of the home of their ancestors. Considering that and their historical ties to the land, I'd say they have a little more say than the average lower 48er.

They own the land they live on, not the surrounding wilderness, which belongs equally to all of us.

I don't have any claim whatsoever to the lands of my ancestors, either. Nor do I have any claim on the land my neighbors live on, or the nearby park.

This reads like imperialism. Do you think Alaskans should be able to have a say in whether land is developed or improved adjacent to where you live, say, in Alabama? Wouldn't make much sense to me..

The wilderness area is under Federal protection. That means we all have a say, not just Alaskans.

The Alaskan wilderness first and foremost belongs to the people who have been living as part of it for generations. They are in a much better position to balance wilderness preservation v. the needs of human habitation than you or I. We are welcome to visit, but they are the ones calling it home - and have far more of a vested interest in preserving and stewarding it than we do.

We upvote what we like, downvote what we don't like. Such dog damn simple creatures we are.

I personally don't consider that nuanced.

I live five miles from pavement, an hour from a hospital, so I understand these concerns.

I would be absolutely disgusted if they paved through my local national forest for some quicker access to... Anything. Literally anything.

Those people all have the choice to leave. Living in remote places comes with many, many tradeoffs and inconveniences. There's no safety in the wilderness.

Keep the wild places wild. There's so little left.

We know from history that the destruction of the jungle's began with roads making them accessible to illegal loggers, miners and hunters. The road to hell...

A lot of illegal logging of old growth goes on in Washington State adjacent to the roads.

100%

It is funny to see all the big city folk comment on this one.

Why?

Isn't it great that big city folk get to vote and decide on your location and livelihood, from the other side of the country? Totally makes sense.

Gas is $6 a gallon, poor families are going hungry, but ok…

Human life should matter more than some self-hating environmentalists’ desire for the earth to be some perceived paradise devoid of humanity.

> Human life should matter more than

This logic will lead to the complete destruction of all natural environments on the only planet in the solar system to host life, and then to our extinction.

"They paved paradise and put up a parking lot."

All you have to do is go to LA or Orlando to see this principle in action. There’s nothing human about a tarmac.

I understand the need to protect the environment from the destructive effects of farming, which consumes fast areas of land.

But an airport? Really?

What’s wrong with helicopters?

The thing I hate the most about helicopters is that their flying altitude isn't restricted even over homes...

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