FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT:    
William Green - 406 542 8510
Shoren Brown - 202 628 1843
 
Website Asks for Pennies to Support Arctic Preservation

Washington D.C. The Department of Energy has reported that drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge might reduce gas prices by as much as 1.5 cents when ANWR oil production peaks twenty years after drilling is authorized.  

Hank Green and Shoren Brown thought that this information made drilling in ANWR seem downright ridiculous so, with the help of the Alaska Coalition and the Alaska Wilderness League, they created AlaskaAction.org and The Penny Campaign.  

The Penny Campaign asks individuals to prove that they believe the Arctic Refuge is worth more than a penny by giving one cent to AlaskaAction.org.  “The Pennies are mostly symbolic, but some people are giving more than one cent and we’re actually making a bit of money to put back into the site,” says Brown.  

During the congressional conference in which the House and Senate will meet to decide whether to include ANWR drilling in the final 2006 budget, Green and Brown will bring the donated pennies to the steps of the Capitol to show the U.S. Congress how many pennies they collected in the weeks leading up to the decision.  

Shoren Brown, who brought in Assistance from the Alaska Coaltion, where he works, says, “We just want to send Congress a message: people don’t care about a penny per gallon.  But they do care about the places that make America special.”  The new website, AlaskaAction.org also has a broader mission.  Green and Brown have integrated the project with The Alaska Coalition’s advocacy campaigns.  They say that they would like AlaskaAction to become a powerful resource for protecting Alaska’s wild places.  AlaskaAction already has a network of over a dozen bloggers in different states keeping the site up-to-date with information on the fight for Alaska’s wild places.
 
in the Refuge is silly.  There just isn’t enough oil there to make much of a difference.  The gains aren’t worth the losses.  People are realizing that no one will profit except the oil companies.”  Hank is a student at the University of Montana in Missoula where he met Shoren in 2003.  In early 2005 they convinced their professors to let them teach a class on using the internet for environmental advocacy.

So far AlaskaAction.org has collected over 13,000 pennies, with more rolling in every day.  “I never thought about it, but pennies are pretty heavy.  I think we’re going to need quite a few people to haul them up the steps of the Capitol,” says Green.  

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