ANWR & African Americans

The African American community does not seem to be concerned about the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) one way or the other, although 92% of the Congressional Black Caucus opposed drilling in the last house vote in 2003.

March 2005 will be remembered as the month that the U.S. Senate voted to approve drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) using a unique mechanism of attaching the legislation to a budget bill that needs only a majority vote instead of the 60 or 67 cloture votes that seem to have become the Senate norm.

AAEA is promoting reparations in the form of privatizing certain federal lands and Alaskan oil lands. The Interior Department should deed the land to interested African Americans who could conserve the land, hold it in trust, donate it to native Alaskans or lease the mineral rights to oil and gas companies. AAEA promotes this strategy regardless of the location of federal lands, whether it is in the Rocky Mountains, offshore, or elsewhere. Federal lands should be transferred to interested African Americans as a reparation. Preferred land would be those federal lands with oil and gas beneath the surface. The reparations for slavery issue could probably be completely resolved by deeding over the 19 million acres to African Americans (which could hold as much as 16 billion barrels of oil).

It is estimated that the Interior Department could start selling ANWR leases in 2007 with oil flowing to the lower 48 within ten years.