Leadership Quote by Allyson Schwartz

“Simply put” is doing a lot of work here: it signals impatience with a debate Schwartz treats as theatrics, not policy. As a politician, she’s packaging a complex fight over the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge into a clean triad that voters can remember and repeat: costly, destructive, ineffective. The structure is deliberate. “Expensive” hits fiscal conservatives and deficit hawks; “environmentally devastating” anchors the moral and ecological stakes; “would do very little” punctures the core promise behind drilling advocates’ sales pitch: relief at the pump.

The subtext is a critique of symbolic energy politics. ANWR drilling, in Schwartz’s framing, functions less as a serious response to an “energy crisis” than as a performative gesture that lets leaders look tough on energy while postponing harder choices: efficiency standards, alternative fuels, demand reduction, and the political pain of telling constituents that global oil prices aren’t set by a single domestic project.

Context matters because this line echoes a recurring moment in U.S. energy debates, especially during price spikes: the turn to frontier drilling as a quick fix. Schwartz anticipates the emotionally satisfying story (we drill, we win) and counters with a timeline and scale argument without spelling it out. The key rhetorical move is linking local action to global markets: even if oil exists, even if it’s extracted, it won’t meaningfully move prices. She’s not just defending a refuge; she’s attacking the idea that scarcity can be solved with one more sacrifice zone.