Tang is a second-year student majoring in political science.
By Eric Tang
Several weeks ago, I found myself sitting on the edge of my seat in
a packed lecture hall in Washington, D.C. In the front of the room
patiently stood the very small man with a dark gray beard and
wonderfully amiable face whom hundreds of us had come to see.
The event I flew across the country to participate in was
ECOnference 2001, a massive student environmentalist conference,
and the tiny man standing in front was Lenny Kohm, a
photojournalist and conservationist who has been fighting to
protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska for the last
14 years.
Kohm, who insists upon being called Lenny, was about to begin
his 1,813th and final showing of his beautiful and telling slide
show presentation “The Last Great Wilderness Project.”
Lenny created the slide show to educate people about the threats by
the oil industry to despoil one of last pristine frontiers on Earth
and to urge us all to fight for its permanent protection.
For those of you who do not know, the Arctic National Wildlife
Refuge is the last place in North America where the full spectrum
of arctic life is protected in one seamless expanse. It is a
remarkably beautiful and precious ecosystem that is home to a
copious array of wildlife including polar bears, caribou, wolves,
seals and eagles. The Arctic Refuge is also the homeland for an
indigenous tribe known as the Gwinch’in, who have depended on
this region and its inhabitants for 20,000 years.
Unfortunately, several large oil companies want to invade this
pristine wilderness area and drill. They want to destroy one of the
most incredible places on Earth for about six months worth of oil.
Drilling in the Arctic Refuge for oil would be like damming up the
Grand Canyon for hydroelectric power or plugging up Old Faithful
for geothermal power.
Nevertheless, the oil companies are relentless in their pursuit
of profit. Having bought the firm support of several politicians
like Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., the oil industry has shown that it
will stop at nothing to see that the Arctic is opened for
drilling.
An amendment allowing drilling was a part of President George W.
Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney’s energy bill which
passed the Republican-controlled House. During America’s
energy crisis over the summer, many proponents of drilling in the
Arctic claimed that extracting the oil from this region would
assuage our energy woes. Since the tragedies of Sept. 11, there
have been claims that drilling in the Arctic is a matter of
“national security” since it would decrease our
dependence on foreign oil.
What proponents of these arguments fail to mention is that the
oil from the Arctic would take at least 10 years to arrive at the
pump. I fail to see how six months’ supply of oil, 10 years
from now, will solve any of our present energy shortages or will
increase our national security.
What makes the idea of drilling in the Arctic such a profoundly
horrible idea is that there are so many better alternatives. If we
simply raised the fuel-efficiency standards of cars and light
trucks to 40 miles per gallon, we would save 3 million barrels of
oil per day, reduce carbon dioxide pollution by 600 million tons
per year, and save consumers $45 billion dollars each year at the
gas pump. Additionally, clean, renewable energy sources like solar
and wind power could satisfy a large percentage of our energy needs
without harming our environment or our public health.
Some people argue that, while great in theory, renewable energy
sources are too expensive. I am not confident that this is true for
all renewable energy sources. In some places the prices of
renewables are at least competitive with nuclear and fossil fuels
and are becoming cheaper every year. However, even given that the
claim of its large expense is true, what most people fail to
recognize are all the external costs of the production and
consumption of fossil fuels which are not included when you pay
your energy bill or buy a gallon of gasoline at the pump.
What oil and energy companies are not made to pay for are all
the costs of environmental destruction caused by the extraction of
the fossil fuels. Nor are they made to pay for all the health costs
of the people who suffer from asthma or emphysema as a result of
the air pollution caused by fossil fuel emissions. Nor are they
made to pay for their contributions to climate change via the
emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Perhaps,
greatest of all, taxpayers like you and I are made to pay billions
of dollars annually to maintain a military presence protecting our
investments in foreign oil.
If oil and energy companies were made to internalize these
costs, the true costs of fossil fuel use would show everybody that
clean, renewable energy sources (which have little to no negative
externalities) are not only the environmental but also the economic
solution to our energy needs.
Furthermore, despite all the appalling problems associated with
fossil fuel use, each year our government subsidizes these
corporations with billions of dollars to assure that they can
continue to pollute our air, destroy our wilderness areas, put our
troops in danger, and all the while remain some of the wealthiest
companies on Earth. Of course, the oil companies are always kind
enough to give some of that money back to the politicians during
election years via campaign contributions.