Rep. Don Young answers questions on ANWR, climate change during forum

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) - The Get Out The Native Vote program concluded its candidate interviews on Wednesday with a Facebook Live forum featuring Rep. Don Young.

The Republican incumbent currently occupying the state’s lone seat in the U.S. House of Representatives was asked a number of questions, including this one on the subject of Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

“What is your philosophy on proper resource development? Specifically, what is your stance on responsible resource development including the opening of ANWR?” asked Nikki Graham, the Director at Alaska’s People.

Young responded with a few of his career highlights on the subject. “ANWR, of course, it took me 14 times to pass it out of the house, bipartisan-wise. Even as a minority I got it done. Unfortunately on the Senate side, it got out of the Senate once and Bill Clinton vetoed it. Now we passed it under the Trump administration with the help of Lisa (Murkowski) and Dan (Sullivan) we got it done and now we’ve had the first environmental statement about it. We want to have a sale, hopefully before the end of the year, if not we will try to do it afterward. But we have a group of people including Nancy Pelosi who want to take away what we’ve done for ANWR and we all know that, everybody may not agree, but we all know that this is probably the biggest potential oil development. It’s 74 miles away from the pipeline, Kaktovik people want it and I believe it will be done environmentally safe and will not affect any wildlife.”

Graham also asked the congressman about climate change. “Alaska is on the front lines of climate change, wildfires, storms, warmer temperatures, and more are slowly threatening the viability of Alaska’s rural native villages. How will you support efforts for emergency preparedness to address the immediate and long term impacts on our changing climate? And secondly what are your thoughts on the Paris Agreement?”

“Oh, I don’t believe the Paris agreement was a good deal. I agree with Trump withdrawing from it. You check the air qualities from Europe following that Paris agreement, they have worse air than we do, they have not improved upon it and those are the facts. I think it would put a detriment on America because we’d have to meet certain regulations and affect our economy and we can’t take jobs away from the American people to try to appease some other people. Now is the climate changing? yes, it is changing, we have to admit that. It changed before, where did the oil come from in Prudhoe Bay? It didn’t come from ice that’s for sure. We have a challenge in some of our rural villages, our native villages along waterways... So let’s accept that let’s see what we can do by adapting to the change and letting the villages move wherever they can if we do that’s what we should be doing,” Young said.

This was only a portion of the congressman’s answers on the subjects of ANWR and climate change, he was asked other questions as well. You can find the full interview by clicking this link here. As for the congressman’s challenger, Alyse Galvin, you can find her full interview as well as the full interviews of Sen. Dan Sullivan and his challenger Dr. Al Gross by clicking on their names here in this article.

Election day is November 3rd, keep an eye on Alaska’s News Source website as well as our many shows for updates and information.

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