Hold On
This Substack might enrage a lot of my readers but it shows that I am not not right wing conservative that follows some direct path on conservative issues.
What I am talking about is President Biden’s undoing of the Trump Administrations policies concerning the Alaskan Arctic Wildlife Refuge.
From the get go, I thought allowing leases on that part of Alaska was stupid and dangerous. I was never really sure how protected land could be opened up to exploitation but the Trump Administration did it. What could they be thinking?
If I remember correctly it was another part of the plan to make the United States totally energy independent and adding the billions and billions of barrels of oil underneath the Arctic ice would have easily done that. Great, but what about the Permian Basin in Texas and Oklahoma and all of the shale deposits in Wyoming, North and South Dakota? There was enough oil there to get us to that nirvana of electric dependence and then some. Why take a chance and ruin such a pristine place?
There are several reasons I believe.
1. The Trump Administration wanted to show the World that we don’t need their oil and we have the will and the technology to be a net exporter.
2. The Administration wanted to turn back as many Obama era initiatives as possible.
3. We had drilled up there before with very few problems so why leave all that oil in the ground?
4. The leases were big money and what government doesn’t like big money.
Out of the 100 or so executive orders President Biden has signed, this is the one I agree with. Does that mean I am going over to the dark side?
Hardly.
I still think the dumbest thing that President Biden has done (among many) was to cancel the Keystone XL pipeline project. Loss of thousands of high paying construction and pipeline jobs was really the beginning of the fallout. Look at the price of oil from when that pipeline was struck down. That has cost Americans billions and for what? To satisfy some undoable pledge about greenhouse emissions?
I am one of those conservatives that actually believes there is a climate crisis but I do not believe it is all man made. This planet has warmed up and cooled off for millenia and we are in the warming up cycle. Surely, our continued impact on the planet has probably accelerated it somewhat but I believe it was happening with or without us.
This going green initiative while well-meaning, is probably going to cause almost as much damage to the planet as staying “dirty”. Think about the cost to the environment from the mining of the minerals we need for this new paradigm. Lithium mining is as bad as coal mining ever been. It’s just on a much smaller scale, for now. We still uses billions of tons of plastics with poor recycling efforts. No matter what the Green initiative believers say, we will still need fossil fuels long into our future to power our electric grid when all else fails.
Forcing Americans to give up fossil fuels does not start with limiting access to fossil fuels. Americans live, eat and breath convenience and until there is the proper infrastructure to support this Green initiative, there will be no change in behavior.
Ok. So let me be clear because I am sure you are getting mixed signals here. I do not believe we need to drill in the Arctic at this time. We have more than enough reserves in this country right now and we will eventually get to a place where EV’s are the dominant means of transportation. However though, we need to use the resources we have and transport them in the most cost efficient, environmentally safe way possible. Trying to appease one small component of the population to the detriment of the bulk of the population doesn’t work for me.