Baby caribou: "Pipelines make us do what?" Utukok Uplands, Western Arctic, Alaska (Florian Schulz / visionsofthewild.com)

Oil drilling in Alaska is good for the caribou! At least it is, according to Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX).

When it comes to getting in the mood for love, endangered tortoises have skilled wildlife biologists doubling as matchmakers, while giant pandas have panda porn. Alaskan caribou? The Trans-Alaska oil pipeline, naturally.

In a House committee meeting on oil drilling in Alaska, Rep. Gohmert, with nary a grin or chuckle (though the same couldn’t be said for his fellow committee members), waxed heartfelt on how the oil pipeline has spiced up Alaskan caribou love life—and why we must clearly, for the love of the animal, ensure we continue caribou date night by drilling more and keeping that oil flowing. An excerpt from his plea for the caribou:

And then they found out that actually, caribou, when they wanted to date, liked how warm the pipeline was, and so when they wanted to go on a date, they’d invite each other to head over to the pipeline …

So my real concern now, when people are talking about cutting off the potential flow of oil through the pipeline, and under the agreement, if the oil stops flowing through the pipeline, then it would have to be removed. My concern is, do we need a study to see how adversely the caribou would be affected if that warm oil ever quit flowing through the pipeline?

A male polar bear patrols the pack ice edge in the Chukchi Sea, Alaska. (Florian Schulz / visionsofthewild.com)

As portions of the contiguous United States find themselves (perhaps a bit uncomfortably) in winter’s chilly embrace, a recently published study in the scientific journal Marine Biology may shed new light on the wintry lifestyles of the Arctic regions of our country.

During this season, Arctic areas like the Beaufort and Chukchi seas, off the northern coast of Alaska, experience months of ‘polar nights’—times when the sun fails to make an appearance (making for a veritable vampire haven, one might say).

The extreme degree of coldness of these winter months is key to the survival of species like the polar bear and ringed seals, who depend on the restoration of thick sea ice (long since diminished during the warmer spring and summer months) in order to hunt and raise their young.

(Florian Schulz /visionsofthewild.com)

It’s that time of year again. No, I’m not talking about the great big man in the red suit and last-minute Christmas shopping.

I’m talking about the House GOP majority trying to deliver on their year-long assault on environmental and public health protections in the last two bills that will be passed by Congress this year.

The first is the omnibus spending bill that was passed by the House and Senate today. For the past two weeks, the GOP House Leadership and Appropriations Chairs have had a priority list of anti-environmental policy riders they had to have in any final spending bill. Some of those at the top of the list included blocking measures to require the clean up of industrial boilers and incinerators, cement kilns and power plants, and attempts to railroad Clean Water Act protections for streams, rivers and lakes. Removing protections for gray wolves in Wyoming and the Midwest were also on the list.

Thanks to the efforts of the White House, and Senate and House Democrats, none of these anti-environmental riders will become law in the final spending bill. Sadly, the same cannot be said of the Arctic. A last-minute, backroom deal tacked on a measure that excludes oil companies from complying with Clean Air Act protections in the Arctic.

Caribou form large herds on the coastal plains north of the Brooks Range, one of the most splendid stretches of wilderness left in America. Arctic Refuge, Alaska. (Florian Schulz / visionsofthewild.com)

The Palmyra Atoll is a tropical coral reef island in the heart of the Pacific Ocean. It’s warm, tiny and far from the vast, frigid Arctic. And yet these distant, disparate places are as alike in one sense as any two places on Earth.

Each is an early victim of humankind’s addiction to fossil fuels and our constantly affirmed determination to stay addicted.

Like other low-lying communities around the world, the Palmyra Atoll, only a few feet from sea level, is quietly disappearing under rising ocean waters. As the Arctic melts—at a near-record pace—the ocean is warming and expanding. These islands and their inhabitants are literally at the water’s edge of global climate disaster.

But, while the evidence of global warming is clear and the science overwhelming, the unwillingness of nations to address this shared problem is perplexing. Even the Obama administration has taken actions that keep us tethered to the oil dependency that contributes so much to climate change.