Tuesday was a milestone for all environmental activists nationwide. I along with fellow grassroot-ers left State College at 4 a.m. to travel to Washington, D.C. to protest drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). The turnout was huge, but I truly expected more people from our community to be involved.

The threat that the Bush Administration has put on ANWR and surrounding indigenous tribes is a serious one. Has our oil dependency become so great that we have the audacity to squander away such a beautiful landscape of protected land, home to thousands of wildlife species and human co-inhabitants?

I cannot stand to let our government, driven by greed and consumption, to permanently destroy the area for a temporary oil fix. The drilling will not decrease prices at the pump. The drilling will not decrease our foreign oil dependence.

However, the drilling will change the way our society interacts with nature forever.