Pitiful Bounty

Oil Survey Says Arctic Has Riches headlines the New York Times. No less an authority than the U.S. Geological Survey estimates that as much as a fifth of the world’s yet-to-be-discovered oil and natural gas reserves lie north of the Arctic Circle.

So maybe Bush and McCain are right. Maybe we are nuts not to go after this bounty. Can we afford to let 90 billion barrels of oil and 1,670 trillion cubic feet of gas just lie there under the tundra and the sea while we suffer an energy price explosion?

Well, certainly we can let them lie. In fact, it makes every kind of sense to choose to let them lie as we turn our attention to other options.

Not only does the development of new fossil fuel supplies hasten global warming. Not only does wholesale exploitation of these reserves wreak havoc in fragile arctic environments. The kicker is that this “bounty” is a drop in the bucket. These vast new oil reserves would serve worldwide needs for – get this – an additional three years at current rates of use. With worldwide demand growth, the new supplies would very likely meet world demand for two years or less when they finally would come on line, years from now.

The game is almost over. With energy use in China, India, and most of the third world growing like gang busters, it is time to look for energy supply solutions elsewhere than in rapid exploitation of the dwindling hydrocarbon deposits still out there.

In the 1980s, when we had cut down almost all the old growth forests in our Pacific Northwest, the EPA ordered logging to halt in some forests where the endangered Spotted Owl nested. Logging interests in business and labor went wild over that decision. Yet, a decade latter, harvesting of old growth forests had come to an end because there were no more old growth forests to cut down. Loggers had found new jobs as truck drivers and nurses. Capital, too, had moved on.

That’s where we are now with fossil fuels. The game is almost over and the people who depend on fossil fuels (all of us) are going wild over the prospect of profound change to our habits and our livelihoods. It’s coming, whether or not we buy ourselves a few more years of gasoline by drilling recklessly in the arctic.