Telling the Truth About Oil, Wind, and Water
Aug 18, 2008 at 06:04PM With the news these days dominated by Michael Phelps winning Olympic gold medals, John Edwards confessing to marital affairs, and Paris Hilton deciding to run for president, I barely even want to know the details of Russia’s recent invasion of Georgia – its neighbor to the south. Russia isn’t even a super-power anymore, and from what I hear, they’re just acting out some leftover anger from the Cold War days. It’s not like Georgia has any oil, does it?
Well, it turns out that underneath the story we’ve been hearing about Russia’s invasion of Georgia, there’s another story. It’s a story about a couple of oil-thirsty countries – the United States and Great Britain, and their plan to loosen Russia’s grip on the rich oil reserves beneath the Caspian Sea. President Clinton, working with Bechtel, British Petroleum, the World Bank, and others, created a plan to build an oil pipeline connecting the Caspian Sea to the Eastern Mediterranean. The idea was that the 1,100-mile pipeline across Georgia would bypass Russia. Well, Russia wasn’t too happy about that, so we gave Georgia hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid, and promised that we would back them if they ever got into trouble. So, here we are, two years after the pipeline began operating, trying to convince Russia not to bomb it into oblivion.
Somehow, with petroleum, we always seem to tell a story that’s not quite the real story. Like when we set out looking for weapons of mass destruction, and came back with a bunch of no-bid oil development contracts. Or when we claimed that the rise in oil prices was just “speculation”, and never mind the fact that after 100 years of pumping, the world’s oil wells are getting kind of tired.
Our habit of not telling the real story isn’t limited to petroleum – it’s rampant throughout the energy industry. Like when T. Boone Pickens, the legendary oil barren, tells us about his plan for wind power but neglects to mention that the transmission corridors for his power lines are really intended for water pipelines. See, he’s got another plan (one that doesn’t have a website), in which he drains the Ogallala Aquifer and pipes all that water to Dallas and other cities in Texas. I can’t really blame him for not talking about it…nobody would ever approve condemning land and seizing it through eminent domain so that a billionaire can create a monopoly on drinking water!
Typically, when someone repeats a pattern of not telling the real story, it’s a sign of addiction. But even as we admit that we have an addiction, we aren’t being completely honest. We’re not addicted to oil, we’re addicted to all the things that oil lets us do—like, live way out in the suburbs and drive into town whenever we need anything. With oil, we don’t even need to talk to one another. The main thing that petroleum gave us was freedom from the responsibilities of community. In a community, we all agree to provide for one another’s needs. You grow vegetables, I’ll harvest firewood, you weave fabric…oh, to hell with all that…we’ll just get it all from Trader Joe’s.
So here’s my proposal: instead of telling stories about all the great new energy technologies we’re getting, let’s talk about how we are going to implement them in ways that rebuild community, and recreate local self-reliance. If we don’t approach it that way, we run the risk of ending up just as dependent on the same big-moneyed, outside interests that dominate us now – only, it’ll all be powered by solar and wind. Big deal!
The real opportunity of the new energy paradigm is that building it can bring us back together as a community. But for that to happen, we need to build it with local resources, and employ locally owned, independent energy businesses. Then we can proudly tell the real story of how it all happened, instead of making up stories about Paris Hilton running for president.
This commentary aired on KUNM on August 18, 2008. To listen, click here.
Drilling Offshore in the Age of Hurricanes
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There’s nothing quite like a hurricane bearing down on the world’s largest collection of oil and gas rigs to remind you just how bad an idea it is to drill offshore. Now, I know Hurricane Gustav was no Katrina or Rita, the pair that delivered the one-two punch to the Gulf in 2005, opening up 600 separate oil spills and dumping 750,000 gallons of crude oil into a fragile, coastal waterway. What’s that? You didn’t hear Katrina and Rita left behind one of the worst environmental disasters of all time? Well, a lot of news outlets reported that not a drop of oil was spilled, and Presidential candidate John McCain recently repeated this myth when he cited those two hurricanes as evidence that it’s now “safe” to drill offshore.
Even Barack Obama, in his acceptance speech last week, said that we need to do more drilling offshore. At least he called it a “stop-gap measure”, and boy, is it ever. We are already drilling fifty thousand new oil and gas wells a year in the United States, and the amount of oil and gas we produce STILL declines every year. We can’t possibly put holes in the ground fast enough to increase our domestic production of oil and gas. Every new well we drill simply offsets declining production from the other wells. Ten years ago we were offsetting those declines with about 15,000 new wells a year. Now it’s 50,000, and ten years from now, if you follow the trend, we’ll need 150,000 new wells a year. It’s like running on a treadmill...you can’t possibly win.
Perhaps the greatest reason of all for not expanding our drilling efforts in the United States is that scientists have discovered a clear link between the rate at which we un-earth carbon-based fuels and the rate at which our climate is destabilizing. Here again, there’s been a lot of confusion about this. From all the reports, you’d think climate change was caused by not having enough air in your tires, or using the wrong kind of light bulbs. But it’s not. Climate change doesn’t care how efficiently we use energy, or what we decide to do with it. The only thing that matters is how fast you dig up the buried carbon resources and release them into the atmosphere.
With this in mind, how can we say we are serious about addressing our climate problem while we push for more drilling? Instead of lamenting the fact that our domestic oil and gas reserves are depleting, shouldn’t we celebrate it? Are we finally getting a look at the end of oil, when we stop unearthing the carbon that is destabilizing our planet? I’m ecstatic!
Now, I’m fully aware of all the dire predictions about how our country would come apart if we stop buying energy from the oil, gas, coal, and nuclear companies. But seriously, if we took the two-trillion dollars we will give them this year and instead built a public infrastructure to harness and distribute renewable energy, would everyone have enough?
Isn’t it possible that the assertion that nothing else is feasible, that we have to keep handing two-trillion dollars a year to the companies that make dirty energy based on non-renewable, planet-killing fuels, is false?
To fix our climate, we need to start leaving carbon-based fuels in the ground. I say we set them aside, declaring them “protected wilderness areas”. The legislation for doing that is already in place – we do it all the time. You just say, “This area must be left untouched so that our children can have a decent future,” and your all done.
Now, if you still feel like you need more reasons to not drill offshore, check out the National Hurricane Center website. There are three reasons right on the home page, and their names are Hanna, Ike, and Josephine, and they’re headed for our shores.
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