North Carolina is in the middle of a battle to determine whether or not hydraulic fracturing should be allowed. I have mixed feelings about having the industry here. I have seen Gasland and for a long while after, I was entirely against it. I watched the news coverage of the BP oil fiaso, and am aware of numerous other oil disasters. Here is a list that takes you to just before the BP incident. People have said that because there is so much redundancy in a nuclear power plant and because every deail is picked over so intently that nothing can go wrong. Here is a list of nuclear incidents you likely would not have heard about in mainstream media. A study is taking place to see how feasible hydraulic fracturing would be for North Carolina. The study, which can be found here, preliminarily reports that with proper regulation fracking can be prosperous. Even without the lists of examples of how bad and/or even good regulation fails to prevent incidents, many people readily admit how ill equipped government is to ensure the best interests of its populous.
I took this picture at AMNH during a trip to New York because it was loaded with irony. I feel it highlights the contradictions people set up around themselves as they try to resolve energy conflicts.
On
the other hand, I am aware of the current state of the renewable
industries, the free-for-all as everyone tries to come up with the next
most efficient product, the lack of standardization that makes
committing to 1 company unnecessarily risky, and the small percentage of renewables currently in use. In this TED talk, T Boone Pickens, makes a good argument of using natural gas as a bridge to the future.
T. Boone Pickens' Lecture at a TED talk
However,
even Pickens admits that he does not know where the bridge goes. He
admits repeatedly, jokingly, that the future is not his problem. He is
right, it is not his problem. It is everyone elses’. If he has
children then it is their problem. I believe solar energy along with the necessary advances in battery technology will be
developed and competitive enough that as fossil fuel demand increases the total energy supply will not be an issue. Also, since the supply will be diversified the industry will be more elastic. Energy supply will not be the problem.
Lack
of funding is the problem. Because the need for an alternate fuel
source will not be great enough once fracking has been deemed our energy savior, investments in renewable energy sources
will pull back. Other countries, tired of suckling to a single fuel
line from a single country and hurting from payment of exorbitant fees
will take the lead. America, the great innovator, is in some ways already
lagging behind the likes of China, Germany, and Brazil. Those countries will only be the beginning. Fuel crises continually arise as a single fuel pipeline cuts through several European/Eurasian countries. The benefit of
being self reliant is too great for many of these countries
to ignore. If America does not take the lead in innovation in addition to being indebted to OPEC nations we will have a whole other host of nations to rely on.
As
hurtful as it is to say, America needs hard times. Those hard times
are what drives invention. People cry to go back to the fuel
bottle, but they must be weaned off it to grow past our present predicaments.
T Boone Pickens portrayed himself to be a neglectful parent, both to
his children and to his country by acknowledging there is a problem and
refusing to address the issue.
There
are people that say you would be eliminating thousands of jobs by
introducing a dramatic change in industry. Not so much eliminating, as
displacing. The jobs that would be lost producing fossil fuels and
destroying ecosystems would be gained in the renewable industry and in
developing new infrastructure to support it. If this is a dramatic and
sudden change, yes, the change would be devastating. To prevent any
sudden changes, it is perfectly fine to proceed with some natural gas
extraction, but ensure funds are raised and location is considered to mitigate
the environmental risks.
Contracts
can have terms set that would either force an up front cost and/or to
resolve any issues. There have been legal
obligations in the past, although were they enough? A decade after the
Exxon Valdez spill digging 6” into sand at the beaches and you pull up
an oily brine. How are the tourist industry jobs recovered? BP
utilized surfactants to disperse and dissolve the oils as they floated
up in the Gulf of Mexico. The greatest benefit, whether BP intended it
or not, was that aerial photos showed no signs of oil. However,
chemicals that settled at the bottom decimated colonies of shrimp and other sea life which harmed another popular area industry. How
are those jobs recovered?
Representatives of a company are legally
obligated to act in the greatest interest of the shareholders and thus
the company; not to protect the environment, not to protect citizens’
jobs. If you are thinking, ‘but their reputation would be hurt by not
protecting the other aspect’, then I have to ask, what was your first
thought when I mentioned Exxon Valdez and BP oil spill? Was it a sort
of groan? Or ‘he’s one of those guys?’ Or ‘not that old topic again’?
Corporations have enough options open to them to protect themselves for
the amount of time that the typical citizen can stand to hear about a
topic.
Besides,
it is primarily an inelastic market. Forcing the oil corps to clean up
their own mess will only result in raising the cost of oil to the
consumer in a reactive rather than proactive manner. What other option do you have? The government can raise the
price of a gallon of fuel. That candidate would quickly be run out of
office next term. It reminds me of a party a friend threw recently.
The friend did not want to invite certain people for different reasons,
but at the same time he did not want to seem rude to those same people.
He had another friend invite people for him. This way when someone
asked either party host, ‘Why didn’t you invite me?’ He could respond
that the other person, which ever person it was, must have forgot. In
our oil instance it would simply be passing the blame to another area of
government. Obama was an event organizer. He should be able to get
that deal together easily. Alright, any conservative reading this
should have been able to appreciate that remark at least.
So,
in summary, the contractual agreement between
government and oil company needs to strongly encourage the company to diversify
its portfolio into renewable investments which help to make the market
more elastic. Eventually, rather than fighting the use of renewables, it will be a perfectly justifiable option to discuss with shareholders. Some of this cost would still come back to the consumer, but
it would be a better value for the dollar. The endeavor is always going to pose environmental risks, but there is no reason the locations should not be prioritized into only operating in the areas of least impact first. For North Carolina, that risk seems too great. Oil companies love to advertise to states about the pockets of resources they have found, but they do not advertise the impacts. And state sponsored studies only look at their own feasibility. The federal government should conduct this study and map out when each state would be allowed to proceed. They are not preventing drilling, only prioritizing it. The study, along with regulating the fossil fuel supply can be used as a tool to manipulate the fuel prices to the consumer to build necessary funds for risk mitigation, to promote federal level infrastructure changes to make other resources a viable option for the future, and to help direct public perception towards the cleaner side of energy production. Because, as Pickens inferred, it is up to us whether we like what we see at the other side of the bridge.
UP NEXT: Natural Gas Boom: "Split Estate" Movie Summary
UP NEXT: Natural Gas Boom: "Split Estate" Movie Summary
No comments:
Post a Comment