OT : oil, ANWR, and war:
If oil hits 40$/B, and/or if we get another ME oil embargo (a real possibility, if things go on as they are), then we'll see (with a 2-4 year lag) a huge increase in oil and gas production outside the ME. There is lots of oil out there, worth developing as long as the oil companies think oil prices will stay high. But they still remember, not so long ago, when oil hit 10$/B. Our government should have organized a plan for energy independance, after the first oil embargo (1956). It is long, long overdue, and, IMO, our short-termism has left us with a huge and avoidable security risk. The money we've spent on wars to secure the ME oil supply, would have been enough to develop domestic energy sources.
There are also the Canadian tar sands, a deposit on the scale of the biggest Saudi fields. There is also wind and solar. The price/kilowatt for those has been dropping steadily for the last 30 years. Extrapolate that LT pattern of cost decline into the future, and it gets competitive with fossil fuels, sometime in the next 4-7 years. Electricity from wind is growing at a 40% annual rate, worldwide. The adoption-vs.-time curve of these alternative energies is, IMO, at the beginning of the steep part of an S-shaped curve. This is not blue-sky-vague-and-distant-future stuff anymore. And a ME war/oil embargo could move it into rapid mass adoption.
As far as ANWR, I don't think it matters much. There (probably) isn't that much oil, it won't put off for long the necessity of switching to non-carbon based energy sources. Developing it is a stop-gap measure, at best. The pretty part of Alaska is the south and middle. ANWR, in the farthest North, is a flat featureless swamp. In winter, it's 60 below. In summer, everything melts, and the mosquitoes make the caribou anemic. Nobody lives there, nobody visits. The two small native villages (the only permanent humans in the vast Reserve), are split on the question of development. I look out into my front yard, and watch a moose grazing on the fruit trees I planted last summer, and have a hard time believing developnment and wildlife can't coexist.
I am also seeing a lot of tangible evidence of global warming. Open water at the North Pole. Hundreds of glaciers, all across Alaska, rapidly retreating. Treelines moving up mountains, forests replacing tundra. It's real.
In the long run, Alaska's economy will depend on tourism and "lifestyle" immigrants. People like you, who come here for the thrill of killing large mammals. People who want to see glaciers and the Northern Lights, and hike or kayak for a day or a month, without seeing another person. So, I don't like the clear-cutting of our southern coastal forests, but I have no problem with ANWR development. |
