Wow, has it been 20 years already? My how time flies when you're consuming fossil fuels like a drunken sailor does grog. Speaking of drunken sailors, it's hard to believe that just 20 years ago, the Exxon Valdez oil tanker was run up on Bligh reef, just minutes after leaving port, no less, because the captain was relieving himself of responsibility while hitting the grog. As you may recall, his ill-timed bender caused 11 million gallons of thick crude oil to surge into the clear, beautiful, productive waters of Prince William Sound. A generation has passed since this ginormous ecological catastrophe took place, yet it is still not all cleaned up. By some recent estimates, upwards of 20,000 gallons are still oozing out of the sandy beaches that dot the Sound.

Lingering oil also has been found on the Katmai coast and Kenai Peninsula over 450 miles away. In some places, the leftover oil remains nearly as toxic as it was in the first few weeks after the spill, according to the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council's 2009 report. And experts believe that it will take generations more for the oil to disappear entirely. What a poke in the eye for the people and animals still suffering from this utterly predictable disaster.

So what have we learned? Most of us figured out pretty quickly that drilling for oil in sensitive areas and moving it around through sensitive areas, was going to cause a mess, predictably. Unfortunately, a seemingly common trait among big oil companies and their executives is how particularly horrible they are at learning from their mistakes and predicting that bad things will happen during their rapacious pursuit of oil.

The oil industry said an Exxon Valdez-like oil spill couldn't happen. But it did. They've said for years now that it's all cleaned up. But it isn't. Now they're saying it won't happen in America's Arctic. But I'd like to know who they think they're kidding.

Beyond the staggering carnage left in the spill's wake - 250,000 sea birds, 1,000 sea otters, 151 bald eagles, to name a few - no one really knows the long-term effects on the region's wildlife. We do know that the local orca pod appears to be on its way to extinction because of the spill, and the Pacific herring population that once drove the region's economy is still too low to sustain a commercial fishery.

The lasting extent of this destruction reminds us that no matter how you spin it, oil development is a risky, dirty business. Despite the oil industry's slick advertising campaigns that try to recast it as a good environmental steward, companies such as Exxon continue to gamble with our nation's natural environment, wildlife and native peoples' ways of life.

Just follow the Trans Alaska Pipeline 800 miles north from Valdez to America's Arctic and you will find the place the next Exxon Valdez disaster is waiting to happen.

The oil industry has its sights set on the unique, fragile ecosystems of America's Arctic - particularly the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. The imposing threats of industrialization are compounded by the fact that the Arctic region already is under immense stress from the impacts of climate change - warming in the Arctic is occurring at twice the rate of the rest of the planet.

As the Arctic environment melts at a rapidly accelerating pace, Arctic wildlife, including the polar bear, ribbon seal, bowhead whale and Pacific walrus, are increasingly at risk. Alaska Natives, who have sustained themselves for thousands of years on the land and waters of the Arctic, watch their way of life become increasingly imperiled.

Currently, there are close to 100 million acres across America's Arctic open for oil and gas development. Even as more areas are opened to development - right now, 73.4 million acres in the Arctic Ocean are in the process of being offered for lease, the largest blocks of Arctic waters yet to be offered - the Arctic remains the "least studied and most poorly understood area on Earth," according to the U.S. Arctic Research Commission. For this reason, the environmental and social impacts of oil and gas development have been poorly studied and documented.