Good news: the price of gasoline may be dropping at the pumps in the near future.

How do I know this? Actually, I don’t. I’m just going off of recent news reports suggesting that the destruction of Arctic areas, due to increases in global temperatures, may end up opening new parts of the earth for oil and gas drilling, and create newer and faster shipping lanes in which to get the black gold out.

The news comes out of an international scientific symposium held in Iceland last week, in a report known as the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, sponsored by the United States, Canada, Russia and a host of Scandinavian countries.

Among the study’s findings were a number of heartbreaking possibilities. For one, rising sea levels, decreased sea ice, and thawing coastal permafrost are likely to result in “devastating consequences” for some arctic animal species, such as polar bears and seals.

As well, climate changes may present “serious challenges to the health and food security of some Indigenous Peoples,” while “major physical, ecological, social, and economic changes” could effect lands well beyond the Arctic.

Thankfully, however, tucked inside all of the predictions of doom and gloom are the kinds of potential good fortune economists and business people like to call “areas of opportunity,” most notably in the fields of energy exploration and exploitation.

Global warming, as it turns out, along with its unintended consequence of decreasing ice shelves and raising ocean levels, may well be just the thing needed to allow increased drilling for oil and gas and easier shipping routes for oil tankers.

“Offshore oil exploration and production are likely to benefit from less extensive and thinner sea ice, although equipment will have to be designed to withstand increased wave forces and ice movement,” said the ACIA report, noting that “extensive” oil and gas reserves have already been identified off the sea coasts of both Alaska and Canada.

Scientists also point out that standards designed to protect the delicate permafrost regions of the Arctic “are currently under review, and may be relaxed” in an effort to allow increased use of heavy-duty exploration equipment, raising concerns about damage to the tundra.

Once the oil has been extracted from the land energy-drilling firms previously scorned as not profitable enough, additional benefits to the bottom line may be realized from the tantalizing possibility that cargo ships might be able to take shortcuts where none had existed before.

Suggesting that by 2100 the Arctic Ocean could be almost ice-free during the summer, the report notes that “reduced sea ice is likely to increase marine access to the region’s resources, expanding opportunities for shipping and possibly for offshore oil exploration.”

Seasonal access to some currently hazardous shipping lanes, such as the Northern Sea Route and the Northwest Passage, could “lengthen considerably as the century progresses, due to the decline of sea ice.”

Which is all good news for anyone bold enough to look past the environmental destruction and potential loss of huge chunks of one of the planet’s continents, and set their sights on the financial and societal benefits warming will bring.

The kinds of destruction the ACIA is talking about, after all, are unlikely to come before the end of this century. Which, for anyone who hasn’t noticed, is still almost a hundred years from now.
That means if it comes down to harming the environment for oil or worrying about the damage such activity will bring, well, harming the environment is going to win.

After all, there are profits to be made, especially for the big oil companies, who haven’t exactly proven their mettle as careful stewards of the environment during the last 100 years.

And it’s unlikely that the Bush administration—well-known for its fondness of “market-based” solutions to environmental problems—will intervene for the good of the planet.

Or that the American people, who have come to expect low gasoline prices at the pump as a God-given right of citizenship, will rise up and demand accountability from corporations that are exploiting the world’s natural resources in an effort to keep their shareholders happy.

Instead, what we have here is what many economists like to call a “virtuous circle,” wherein the outcome of one event creates favorable conditions for the outcome of another event, and so on.

In this case, the circle goes like this: billions of cars using gasoline made from oil create carbon monoxide pollution, which heats up the earth’s atmosphere, which, in turn, warms the Arctic region, reducing the ice caps over reserves of more oil, which can then be extracted cheaper to sell to car owners, who will use it to create more global warming.

As a result, the energy companies get to make more money. Americans will continue to use up the world’s resources at an alarming rate, and you can still use that car to drive down to the corner store.
Meanwhile, endangered plants and animals become more endangered, indigenous people see their homelands destroyed and one of the world’s last remaining wild places is brought to heel.

Which is a small price to pay, when you think about it.

After all, with a bit of luck, it could cost less to fill up your tank in the future.

And who doesn’t want that?

This entry was posted on Monday, November 15th, 2004 at 6:59 pm and is filed under On Writing.