Almost from day one, environmental groups campaigned to block, delay, and eventually kill the project. Environmental groups and academics began inventing a series of doomsday scenarios against the pipeline. They argued that it would be better to stop using oil and stop obsessing about economic growth in order to save the planet. Sounding much like the global warming alarmists of today, David Bower, president of Friends of the Earth, claimed:

The annual cost that will accrue to people unborn, and the threat to endangered species, are price tags we cannot fail to consider if we are to be responsible human beings. Delay,  is the price we must be prepared to pay to make sure that we do not destroy the environment upon which we and other life forms down into the future will depend for survival. As many scientists fear, we are approaching the point of no return in a race to oblivion!

The naysayers were wrong 40 years ago, and they are still wrong today. TransAlaska Pipeline!