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Notes -
As an Alaskan, I have definite mixed feelings on this topic.
On the one hand, I like our wilderness, our "wild" character, the vast tracts of nature. My natural inclination is to say "no" and favor protection of undeveloped land.
On the other hand, the Feds own something like 2/3 of the land, and together with state parks it comes together to something like 90% of Alaska. And then, on top of that, you have further lands that are off-limits due to Federal regulations (like the Wetlands Act) written with the Lower 48's climate in mind, and which apply poorly to our very different climate.
Further, our economy has been in shambles for decades now, because the primary economic base* for our state has, historically, pretty much always been resource extraction (
as is the case with the economies of the Scandinavian countries[I stand corrected]), which has been slowly strangled by environmental law and activism pretty much my entire life. So we really need some more mining and/or oil drilling opened up, or we're pretty screwed.*note that "largest sector of the economy" ≠ "majority of the economy."
No, it isn't. While Alaska has at points had over 50% of their economy be resource extraction that isn't true for any Scandinavian country. Norway, being an outlier with more than 100% more resource extraction than the next in line is only at about 20% resource extraction.
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