This month, we interrupt the parade of “perfectly legal but wrong” entries to bring you something questionably legal and clearly wrong. Seismic testing in preparation for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge could begin this winter. In December 2018, the New York Times posted an account of the break-neck speed that the Trump Administration has taken to starting drilling in the ANWR, ahead of the 2020 election.
As the Times explains, “The biggest untapped onshore trove of oil in North America is believed to lie beneath the refuge’s coastal plain along the Beaufort Sea. For more than a generation, opposition to drilling has left the refuge largely unscathed, but now the Trump administration, working with Republicans in Congress and an influential and wealthy Alaska Native corporation, is clearing the way for oil exploration along the coast.”
The key seems to be the Interior Department, which has jurisdiction over the Arctic refuge. It has been “central to the administration’s regulatory rollback in Alaska and beyond, accommodating the wishes of big businesses to strip down rules on how federal lands can be used.” This has been true since President Trump appointed Ryan Zinke to be Secretary of the Interior. Zinke, before leaving his post because of perceived ethics issues in December 2018, did all he could to open public lands to more and more “development.” Indeed, Sen. Murkowski lamented his departure, though Zinke’s successor shows no signs of taking a different tack on developing public lands.
In bending the laws and rules on environmental impact statements, the Trump administration is on pace to finish an environmental impact assessment in half the usual time. An even shorter evaluation of the consequences of seismic testing is nearing completion. Within months, trucks weighing up to 90,000 pounds could be conducting the tests across the tundra as they try to pinpoint oil reserves.
If this is legal, it is only barely legal, as Tim Hogan’s incisive op-ed details.
The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge was established in 1980, and is home to numerous species such as polar bears, caribou, and migratory birds. Polar bear populations are already listed as “threatened” by development and human-caused climate change.
https://www.worldwildlife.org/species/polar-bear
Drilling and oil extraction are particularly difficult in this area, and significant oil spills and despoliation of the environment are fairly routine with drilling operations. Environmental groups have worked tirelessly to protect this area from drilling and development, but it is clearly a perennial struggle against those who would benefit from drilling on public lands.
Capitalism requires exponential growth, regardless of the consequences on the natural environment. “Green economists” (natural resource economists) such as Hermann Daly have sought a better balance between economic growth and environmental stability, promoting a “steady state economy” in contrast to exponential “development.”
Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, and Hunter Lovins have added a thoughtful analysis in their book, Natural Capitalism, of how U.S. and international policies create a system in which labor is over-taxed, and resource extraction is under-taxed.
But the politics of the moment, or, really, of the last fifty years, re-commits us all to “development” rather than the better balance prescribed by Hermann Daly and other natural resource economists. Lisa Murkowski, Alaskan Senator, wants development, and has received significant campaign contributions from oil and energy interests.
https://www.opensecrets.org/members-of-congress/contributors?cid=N00026050&cycle=2018
The political history of ANWR is intriguing, and suggests that Alaskan senators will not cease their efforts to promote drilling in ANWR. Before Lisa Murkowski, Senator Ted Stevens vowed to bring drilling to ANWR “however long it takes.”
https://www.nrdc.org/stories/long-long-battle-arctic-national-wildlife-refuge
The Alaskan senators’ devotion to drilling is not just about campaign contributions, however. As the National Geographic explains, “Alaska, a state with neither a sales tax nor an income tax, needs every dime. The oil and gas industry funds 90 percent of the state budget—plus an annual dividend of over $1,000 to each Alaskan—mostly through a tax on North Slope oil flowing through the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS). Since oil prices plummeted in 2014, the state has suffered multibillion-dollar budget deficits. More ominously, in spite of a recent uptick, the amount of oil oozing through the pipeline has fallen steadily since 1988. A 2012 report from the U.S. Energy Information Administration estimated that if oil prices stayed low, the pipeline would shut down by 2026.”
But the spill of the Exxon Valdez in 1989 demonstrated how difficult it is to clean up oil spills in frigid waters. Indeed, Prince William Sound, where Capt. Hazelton ran his ship aground, had far tamer waters to deal with than anything in ANWR; and still, the clean up was badly mishandled, and has left lasting environmental damage.
https://www.thebalance.com/exxon-valdez-oil-spill-facts-effects-on-economy-3306206
It’s not as though most Americans really want ANWR drilling to happen. But, given the political ascendance of Donald Trump and his anti-environmental appointees (Scott Pruitt and his time at the EPA is another story entirely), and the importance of revenue to Alaskan state government and its citizens, the rush is on. Lawsuits can be expected, but the pressure to “drill baby, drill” will be unrelenting, despite the undeniable impact that fossil fuel burning is having on our collective well being, and that oil will be increasingly irrelevant to the economy of the future.
http://time.com/5178262/climate-change-oil-companies-future/
It’s all quite senseless, really, unless you mean “dollars and cents sense” for those with political leverage.