ENVIRONMENTAL DAMAGE, ABANDONED TREATIES, AND FOSSIL-FUEL DEPENDENCE: THE COMING COSTS OF OIL-AND-GAS EXPLORATION IN THE ‘‘1002 AREA’’ OF THE ARCTIC NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE BENJAMIN K. SOVACOOL Department of Science and Technology Studies, Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, Blacksburg, Virginia, USA (e-mail: Sovacool@vt.edu) (Received 4 May 2005; accepted 2 December 2005) Abstract. Contrary to claims from American politicians, lobbyists, and oil and gas executives, allowing energy development in the Alaskan Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) will harm the environment, compromise international law, erode the social significance of wilderness protection, and ultimately fail to increase the energy security of the United States. After exploring a brief history of the ANWR controversy, this piece argues that the operation of oil and gas refineries in ANWR will release discharged solids, drilling waste, and dirty diesel fuel into the ecosystem’s food-chain, as they have from oil operations in Prudhoe Bay. Less obvious but equally important, oil and gas exploration in ANWR will violate a number of international treaties on biodiversity protection. In the end, development in ANWR will threaten the concept of wilderness protection, and will do little to end US dependence on foreign sources of energy. Key words: Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, energy policy, energy security, environmental law, oil and natural gas development. ‘‘Recreational development is a job not of building roads into lovely country, but of building receptivity into the still unlovely human mind.’’ – Aldo Leopold, 1947 1. Introduction On Wednesday, 16 March, 2005, Senator Pete V. Domenici, Chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, narrowly pushed through a bill that permits oil and natural gas exploration in the ‘‘1002 Area’’ of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). While many environmentalists and scholars reacted strongly against Domenici’s legislation, none have produced a comprehensive analysis of its broader environmental, legal, social, and political consequences. Based Readers should send their comments on this paper to: BhaskarNath@aol.com within 3 months of pub- lication of this issue. Environment, Development and Sustainability (2007) 9:187–201 Ó Springer 2006 DOI 10.1007/s10668-005-9013-4