The cover story in this month's National Geographic Magazine is called "Selling Alaska's Frontier" and it explores the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) and the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPRA) wilderness area's natural beauty as well as the animals which roam there for the purpose of surmising what the "cost of doing business" will be if we continue the move towards drilling for oil there.   The piece begins by telling us that "save for a few sizable parcels owned by the native Inupiat, (ANWR) belongs to you and me."   The reader is told that without exploitation, the area is home to "half a million caribou, hundreds of grizzlies, wolves, and in summer, more waterfowl, raptors, and shorebirds than anyone can count."   The notion is that since this place belongs to you and me, we ought to preserve it so we can keep its pristine quality while providing a home for this diverse wildlife and thereby save it for "our children's future."   But for whom are we preserving this area in its pristine state?   Are your children going to be visiting ANWR?   Mine aren't planning any trips there.   Are yours?

So much of what environmentalism is about is saving pristine wilderness for photographers, artists, and those wealthy enough to take trips there to enjoy its pristine beauty.   You aren't going to ANWR, neither is anyone you know, or their children, or their children's children.   The truth is that uncontrolled environmentalism has its costs.   We pay more at the pump than we would have if we didn't protect these large swaths of wilderness, much of it completely uninhabited and uninhabitable, in order to preserve spaces for the very rich or well-funded to go to and sell magazines or television programming.   We force ourselves into closer and closer living quarters, with all the negative ramifications of that, in order to preserve more and more "wildernesses" so we can provide habitat for squirrels, foxes, coyotes, etc.   We pay more for the things we need to live so that hundreds of grizzlies can roam free and provide subjects for National Geographic's photographers.

Yet we never question for whom these wilderness areas are protected.   It isn't for the animals which can still survive if we drill sensibly for some oil there.   It isn't for the average middle class workers who struggle to survive and scrape enough money together in order to take vacation trips to make-believe wildernesses in Kissimmee, Florida.   It is for the filthy rich that we preserve great open spaces.   It has always been that way.   It is an obscenity that the proletariat has been pushed around for so long by the rich.   That's what environmentalism is.