Green thoughts on gas prices

Editor

Barring a miraculous slide in the price of fuel, higher utility costs are almost a certainty. The latest outlook on fuel prices is that it is going to continue to hover at stratospheric heights, at least until the end of winter in the northern hemisphere, which is more or less still three months away.

Even then, the insatiable appetite of China’s economic engine for fossil fuel will continue to siphon off most of the world’s oil supply, ensuring the artificial shortage that has kept oil prices at record levels. Even the recent effort by the Chinese government to stem their country’s gallumphing growth due to fears of an overheating economy would not be enough to drown out the slurping sound echoing across the Pacific as more and more oil is sucked into the East. The Chinese dragon is finally awake and is on a feeding frenzy.

Add to that equation the unfinished financial debacle facing Russia’s largest oil producer, Yukos, the unremitting efforts of terrorists to sabotage Iraqi oil pipelines, and the labor unrest that has held up oil productions in Nigeria and Venezuela and you have the makings of buoyant oil prices hovering above the $40-a-barrel mark (At the moment, it is at $45.49 a barrel, from a high of $55 a barrel in late October.) Even the recent announcement by the U.S. Department of Energy of large increases in the nation’s fuel supply will have minimal impact at best. The fact that the $40-a-barrel psychological mark has been breached only means that market forces will continue to lift prices of crude.

Such a situation poses worries not only on the home front in terms of higher utility costs but also the added stress that would be placed on the environment. As prices of crude continue to hover above $45 a barrel, the U.S. government will be under more pressure to find ways and means to boost its own fuel production to lessen dependency on imported fuel. It will also need to bulk up its reserves to cushion the impact of any sudden increases in oil prices or sudden drops in the fuel supply.

President Bush himself hasn’t exactly gone out of his way to endear himself to environmentalists. Even during his first term, administration officials have had several clashes with environmental groups and watchdogs, who had criticized his decision to loosen logging rules in old growth forests and allow more snowmobiles into the Yellowstone National Park. With his victory in the recent election, the Bush administration is bound to feel that it has been given a mandate to do whatever it wants and President Bush will of a certainty take that mandate for a walk to see how it plays out.

Environmental Protection Agency administrator Mike Leavitt said as much during a recent interview with the Associated Press, saying he foresees more EPA water monitoring and preparations against chemical and biological attacks—as opposed to stricter enforcement of regulations. “I believe the mission that the president has given me in a second term, and the agenda and the philosophy that was validated by the election, was more progress, faster, being achieved in a way that will maintain economic competitiveness as a nation,” he to AP. Of course, he did not say outright that the administration intends to lay waste pristine environments but the unspoken implication is there, a troubling cloud that bodes ill for tree huggers.

Even now, environmentalists are beginning to see some of their worst fears being realized after Bush declared as his top energy priority the opening of an Alaska wildlife refuge to oil drilling. Republicans, after all, are pro-business and have stated in no uncertain terms that environmental decisions are better made based on market forces than an academic understanding of the need for preservation, conservation, or reduction of pollution. Look at the White House decision to junk the Kyoto Protocol. The administration apparently does not plan to change its mind on the rejection of the climate treaty that would impose mandatory caps on carbon dioxide emissions.

The next four years promises to be interesting in terms of how the Bush presidency will live down accusations of being the most anti-environment president ever. It behooves Bush to convince his detractors that securing the nation’s oil supply does not necessarily mean the despoilation of the country’s lands, forests and oceans. And it will have to be Leavitt’s and Interior Secretary Gale Norton’s responsibility to ensure that Bush will leave behind a legacy that would prove his critics wrong, in so far as the administration’s environmental policies are concerned.

True, all these environmental issues seem far removed from the Northern Marianas, which, comparatively speaking, remains unspoiled. However, one must move away from this reverse NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) mentality because just because it is not happening in your backyard does not mean that it will not affect you. We have to look at the planet and its ecology as one interlinked and interdependent system, where a small problem in a remote corner has the potential of bringing down the whole system. Look at it from a perspective of a toothache: It’s just one small tooth but microscopic bacteria gnawing at a nearly invisible tooth nerve can still debilitate the entire body. And that toothache, at least for the moment, is the world’s increasing appetite for fuel, which would inevitably lead to over-drilling, to the expansion of oil fields, to the opening up of even more oil fields, to the exposure of more areas to the risks posed by drilling and mining… and so forth and so on—a cascade of events that will sooner or later, bring down the whole system collapsing around our ears.

(The views expressed are strictly that of the author. Vallejera is the editor of the Saipan Tribune.)