A “Keep-it-in-the-Ground” GoFundMe? Alaska Rep Thinks it is a Good Idea

March 1, 2023

We’ve seen many proposals from the eco-left over the years that had us scratching our heads and pondering how anyone could think they were good ideas.  This one from Alaska might take the cake.

Late last month, during a meeting of the Alaska Legislature’s House Ways and Means Committee, Representative Andrew Gray (D-Anchorage) asked the following:

“I kind of have the ultimate CCUS [Carbon Capture, Usage and Storage]: Is it possible under some circumstance for us to get paid not to take oil out of the ground? And my brief sort of crazy idea is to just sort of, if we did it like a GoFundMe, there’s so many environmentalists around the world that we could potentially set up a charge, to fund our government, to be paid not to drill oil. If we had people, if we had 100 billion in the ground, and we divide it up how much that would be over time, that we could potentially get paid not to drill. Do people talk about that? Is that possible?”

You can view Rep. Gray’s comments here.

Aside from the relative complexity associated with funding state government on the backs of individual GoFundMe donations – which certainly are less-reliable than the more than a billion dollars resource development helps fund the state with annually – there’s a gaping hole in Rep. Gray’s logic: more than a quarter of all private-sector jobs in the state are supported by the safe and responsible extraction of oil and gas.  A GoFundMe won’t fund those jobs.  They’d be lost, and Alaska’s unemployment numbers would skyrocket.

But to Rep. Gray, who was endorsed during this last election cycle by the radical Alaska Center (for the Environment) and other anti-development organizations, keeping oil in the ground is a goal that should be explored; no matter how much damage it would do to his constituents and the state. Simply put, elections have consequences.  They put zealots with fringe ideas into office, and then we get to listen to “solutions” like this.  Let’s hope this is the low point of Rep. Gray’s legislative career, and that he doesn’t have any more “brilliant ideas” in the future.