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October 21, 2005
The Bramble Bush
by Kevin Morford

The Real Permanent Fund

     The recent distribution of Permanent Fund Dividend payments is a part of the most popular political program in Alaska. The Permanent Fund itself, and the annual payout of part of its earnings in the form of dividends, are political sacred cows which are fiercely protected by the recipients of those dividends. With a current net worth of over $30 billion, the Permanent Fund is rightly regarded as an important resource that can contribute to the future economic well being of Alaska. It is considered so important that the principal capital of the Permanent Fund is protected by the Alaska Constitution, and cannot be appropriated without a constitutional amendment.

     Yet total value of the Permanent Fund is actually quite small compared with the value of Alaska’s real permanent fund. Despite this, there are no constitutional protections for Alaska’s real permanent fund, and its principal capital is being drawn out and used up on a daily basis. It is a sad but revealing commentary on the mind set of Alaska’s political
leadership that people who try to preserve and protect Alaska’s real permanent fund are widely reviled as “extremists” and are attacked on a daily basis in newspapers across the state. The basis for that hatred is the fact that many of the political leaders in Alaska, and their cronies, seek to profit personally by invading the principal capital of Alaska’s real permanent fund. As far as they are concerned, the more they can grab for themselves, the better off they will be, and future generations can just go suck hind teat.

     Alaska’s real permanent fund is its natural environment. Its value is vastly greater than the value of the money in the financial Permanent Fund, which only represents one quarter of the State’s cut of the revenues from natural resources since the mid 1970s. Properly cared for, Alaska’s natural environment will support the people of Alaska in
perpetuity. It is our common heritage, and should be the recipient of even greater devotion and protection than is currently given to our financial Permanent Fund. Despite this, it is being assaulted and degraded on a daily basis by shortsighted economic activities, and its principal capital is being destroyed.

     We humans are perfectly capable of taking a lush fertile natural environment and turning it into a wasteland. We have already destroyed entire regional environments, even without the assistance of modern technology. Large swaths of planet earth, which were formerly Edens, are deserts today because of human activities. Agriculture has washed millions of tons of topsoil into the oceans, leaving the land unproductive. Overgrazing has stripped off protective vegetation, leaving soils exposed to even more erosion by water and air. The cradle of civilization, also known as the fertile crescent, has been a desert for centuries now because of human activities. It takes many thousands of years for nature to rebuild resources that we can use up and destroy in a few short years.

     Modern technology and human overpopulation accelerate and magnify the effects of human activities on the planet. Both globally and locally, we are systematically destroying the natural environment that we rely upon for our very existence. If you look at the map of toxic contamination sites in Alaska, produced by Alaska Community Action on Toxics (link here), you can see how far down that path we have already come even in supposedly pristine Alaska.

     For now, Alaska still has some relatively intact ecosystems. This makes our natural environment rare and valuable and very much worth protecting. If we do not take much stronger steps to protect it, human activities could easily transform our natural environment into an arctic equivalent of Love Canal. We all need to do more to protect Alaska’s real permanent fund, its unparalleled natural environment that will continue to sustain us for as long as we protect it from our own folly.







Kevin Morford is a political activist and an attorney in private practice in the Anchorage area.  He can be reached at kmorford@insurgent49.com.
- Columnists -

Editor's Desk
by Aaron Selbig

Red Alert
by Soren Wuerth

Alaskan In Exile
by Neil Zawicki

The
Bramble Bush
by Kevin Morford





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in-sur-gent (in sur'jent), n. 1. a member of a group which revolts against the policies of its leadership.