President Obama is blocking oil drilling in The Arctic Ocean

I read on Vice and The Guardian that President Obama's Administration is blocking any oil drilling in The Arctic Ocean. They feel like doing any drilling would be too dangerous to our environment.

I know this isn't going to sit well with some of my friends and family. People would like to get some kind of work around here in Kotzebue and there was hope that it would be possible to drill for oil near this area.

But you gotta think long term. Yes there might be oil out there. Maybe. But you know what is there? Seals. Fish. The food we eat.

Are we really going to risk that? A lot of the times when the topic of our food supply is brought up I hear people worried about the dwindling caribou herd. The fact that there isn't the amount of seals there has been.

We took steps in trying to protect the caribou herd by putting a stop to outside hunters coming into our region in hopes that maybe that will help the caribou population. But lets be real. They just got a fraction of the caribou that was hunted. So you're telling me you're fine taking dangerous oil out of Kotzebue Sound or The Bering Sea but hunters from The Lower 48 can't come here to do a little bit of hunting and spend some money?

What's the deal with that?

You know in a perfect world a company could come in and drill. Everyone on the rig will be on the ball and the workers will get great production safely. They'll bring some people from out of state or Anchorage to run the show while getting some hands from the villages around here. They'll learn a trade and grow into it. Then after a year or two we'll thank them and we'll then be running the show. We'll have oil and you know what that means? We could be Barrow! Costs will either go down or be eliminated all together. No one is going to have to worry about being cold or having to chop wood. We get drive our vehicles more often because of lowered gas prices. Everything could be great.

It would be nice if all that could happen. But we don't live in a perfect world. All you need to do is read the Arctic Sounder or watch the news on KTUU to see that.

We have taken steps to protect the caribou herd by stopping outside hunters. Well President Obama is protecting Kotzebue Sound and The Arctic Ocean by stopping oil drilling here.

And you know maybe it's futile because we're only two months away from a Trump Presidency.