In what sounded like a tuneup for a big section of his State of the State address, Gov. Mike Dunleavy claimed that the Biden administration, banks, environmental groups and others who want to preserve Alaska’s wild country have declared “war on Alaska.”

They want nothing less than to end Alaska as a state, force it into receivership and turn the state into a park, he claimed.

“So essentially what we have going on here is an attempt to destroy a state within the federal system, to turn it into nothing more than a national park,” Dunleavy said.

As it happened, Dunleavy’s State of the State address to Alaskans Thursday was far milder and more reserved than what he said to the Texans. He didn’t mention war or receivership.

He is not the first and he will not be the last politician to try to change the subject with hysterical tough talk. It’s easier to take aim at the feds and Outside environmental groups than to deal with the budget crisis.

It’s easier to portray Alaska as the helpless victim of federal overreach, under siege by a conspiracy of banks and environmental groups powerful enough to scare away big oil companies, than to recognize the complexity of climate change and understand the changing world economics of oil.

“These groups are declaring war on the state of Alaska,” Dunleavy said of the alleged Alaska enemies in a panel discussion with the right-wing Texas Public Policy Foundation Jan. 13. “I know that this is language that in the last couple of days some folks would caution us from using. But I don’t know how else you word it. This is what’s occurring and we’re gonna fight it.”

“It’s a wake-up call. We’re gonna have to come up with some different ways to finance some of these projects. But if these folks win in the end, cheap energy in the form of fossil fuels will be in the history books.”

“All I’m saying to you guys is this, we are the canary in the mine. We’ve been the canary in the mine for some time. What would have been major oil companies tripping over themselves to get leases in ANWR, there were none. That’s what you’re facing.”

“You can see how effective these groups, these individuals have been at basically cowing people into not considering this as an investment.”

The Alaska Congressional delegation, who announced that President Obama declared war on Alaska five years ago, have already marked the start of hostilities with President Biden.

Much of what Dunleavy told the Texans about the history of Alaska resource development is false, particularly his version of what happened during the statehood movement and at the Alaska Constitutional Convention. I’ll deal with that at another time.

In addition, Dunleavy, who arrived in Alaska in 1983, believes that environmental groups and anti-development groups began focusing on Alaska in the 1990s under President Clinton, which shows he knows nothing about the enormous fight over the trans-Alaska pipeline and the Alaska Lands Act, for starters.

Dunleavy told the Texans that he’s ready to fight, which probably means spending millions more to hire lawyers for expensive lawsuits and prolonged administrative fights.

“We’’re gonna answer the call. And we are not going to go quietly in the night. We are going to stand up in any form possible to fight back on this,” he said.

”We’ll be having conversations with Texas and places like Wyoming and North Dakota, South Dakota and others, like-minded states, to join forces, potentially in a resource defense action, if necessary, against some of these outfits as well as potential agencies in this new administration.”

“We are the least diversified economy in the country,” he said, citing that as the big reason why Alaska needs oil and gas, when it really is a weakness that generations of Alaskans have failed to resolve.

Dunleavy said that every American believes that Alaska is owned by all Americans. This, of course, is correct when it comes to the federal lands and waters that belong to all Americans. Americans who do not live in Alaska regard it as something worth preserving and they want to know that it is taken care of.

The longer I live, the more I am grateful for the sense of national ownership by those who will never even visit here, as it is a kind of insurance against those the late Gov. Jay Hammond always referred to as “the rape, ruin and run boys.”

Dunleavy scoffed at those who live Outside and yet think they have a stake in Alaska.

“Everybody in this country believes that they own Alaska. There are many Americans that don’t even realize it’s a state. They believe it’s a thing. It’s owned by us. It’s a crown jewel for America. And by God, we’re gonna do everything we can to make sure that we don’t destroy that particular jewel like we’ve destroyed our own states,” he said.

“And so during the Clinton administration, things start to be shut down here in the state of Alaska. The Tongass, which produced tremendous amounts of timber, was destroyed by the Clinton administration through the roadless rule.”

According to Dunleavy, the massive conspiracy won’t be happy with turning Alaska into a park.

“They’re gonna try and convince you guys that Alaska’s a special situation. ‘We’re not interested in South Dakota, North Dakota or Texas, we’re just trying to protect Alaska.’”

”Once there’s a success there and this state ceases to be a state and goes into receivership under the feds and becomes a big park, they’re gonna find something beautiful about Texas, that Texans are really doing wrong, and that they need to be, they need to be reeducated as to how to do things the right way.

“I don’t think we wait any longer to be perfectly honest with you.”

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