Peak Oil is the Least of our Worries

Bill McKibben has written another powerful and chilling piece on climate change, this time in Rolling Stone magazine (link). In it he highlights a few very important numbers concerning fossil fuels and climate change. The scariest one is the amount of carbon stored in known reserves of fossil fuels on the planet, 2795 Gigatons. That dwarfs the amount the atmosphere can handle and maintain any reasonable temperature increase due to global warming (which scientists set at about 2 degrees Celcius). Prior to the latest economic bubble bust, the concept of peak oil was getting a lot of coverage due to the concern about increasing demand and prices relative to known oil reserves. Now that frakking has made billions if not trillions of cubic feet of natural gas available for mining, no one much talks about peak oil anymore. Even if frakking hadn't opened up new natural gas reserves, the world has enough coal to keep polluting the skies and running Industrial Age economies for a century or more.

Economists often like to take a value-neutral stance when it comes to such issues as global warming, assuring us that human ingenuity, market forces, and advances in technology will cure what ails us. But what McKibben has made clear is that the no invisible and price-driven hand will be able to avert the global-scale catastrophes that global warming is already causing. With past progressive movements, such as the abolition of slavery, equal rights for women and minorities, and protection of the environment, economists may point to things like changing economic and technological forces that made slavery and suppression of women's full participation as workers and consumers inefficient and uneconomical and fouling of the environment counter-productive and unnecessary. While interesting, it assumes changing economics and technology are necessary (if not sufficient) for societies to take effective action. 

Regardless of what you think of that argument in general, global warming and climate change simply cannot wait for market forces or technological shifts to make the move away from fossil fuel use toward renewable energy production and sustainable economies inevitable or more efficient. Such changes must be spurred by the moral call to action and the political will to do what is right, not what is expedient. That is why people of faith cannot sit on the sidelines on this issue or urge patience and moderation, as southern ministers asked of Martin Luther King, Jr. in the fight for civil rights. The continuing struggle to overcome ingrained predjudice against minorities and women, e.g. unequal pay, home loan discrimination, and voter ID laws, all speak to the need for a strong moral foundation to ensure we uphold the ideals of the nation and the values we hold most dear as people of faith. Bill McKibben's latest essay not only reinforces the importance of global warming and energy use as moral issues but moreover the need for people of faith to speak out and take action to make it a personal, social, and political priority.

Frakking Up the Environment

Bill McKibben delivers a powerful essay once again with a review of two books on the local social and environmental costs of hydraulic fracturing ("frakking"). Since Hawaii doesn't import natural gas (although it is manufactured from processing of imported oil), HIPL hasn't made much of the boom in frakking activity on the mainland US. However, increasing evidence is demonstrating the significant and potentially long-term health and environmental effects of this extraction process. Bill's use of phrases like "ripping apart the earth" clearly indicate where his heart lies, but it is the accumulation of evidence and anecdotes of fouled drinking water wells, contaminated streams, unhealthy air pollution in rural communities, and the growing social and environmental costs that are hardly paid for by the royalty payments for allowing drilling. The key point McKibben makes for the IP&L network, however, is that natural gas obtainable through this process is abundant, not just domestically but globally. Far from being a "bridge" fuel to a truly clean and renewable energy future, it's just another version of the same drug that's keeping us addicted to profligate energy use.


What struck me about the piece, however, was not the sad conclusion that energy companies and politicians are not serious about moving beyond fossil fuels but rather the tolerance we continue to have for "ripping apart the earth" in the name of cheap energy. Read his piece about the frakking process and then reflect for just a minute. It seems like the height of blindered self-ignorance to think this ravaging process wouldn't cause serious environmental harm, especially when multiplied across the landscape in the largely unregulated fashion in which it has taken place. And like coal mining via mountaintop removal, this process is both aesthetically and frankly morally ugly. You don't have to anthropomorphize the planet to see the revolting nature of hydraulic fracturing.
Think of it this way. If photovoltaics or wind power or wave power or biomass energy used processes anything like frakking, do you think they would be acceptable alternatives to fossil fuels? The only renewable energy source that is remotely similar to oil or gas mining is geothermal, and that is enough to limit its development here in Hawaii. The potential impacts of large solar arrays or wind farms on wildlife are sufficient for communities and interest groups to take action to limit these impacts or ensure proper regulation, siting, and mitigation, which is appropriate. But these pale in comparison to the far-reaching impacts of climate change on plants, animals, people, and the planet, as well as the more localized land, air, and water pollution impacts. We would simply never tolerate these kinds of unintended consequences of renewable energy development, yet we turn a blind eye to the real and potential harm being done by fossil fuels.


There is no defense, no justification, no denying, and no acceptable trade-off for these effects. It is simply immoral to think or argue otherwise. We do not need to exploit fossil fuels in this way to thrive or survive as a nation and not even to a basic standard of living for 7 or even 10 billion people. Energy use is ultimately a moral choice and not a technological one, from the source to the processing to how and how much of it we use as individuals, families, and communities. The stories of frakking that McKibben reviews are the same stories of immorality and greed cloaked in the guise of development and public benefit found throughout history, literature, and the sacred texts of the world's great religions. And the lessons of those stories and wisdom from those texts are just as relevant today. We may feel overwhelmed at times by the pace and scope of the challenges before us, but so did the prophets of old who often had no more than a calling from God and a passion for truth, justice, and the realization of the sacred relationship between God and Creation, a relationship that was mirrored in our relations among each other and all of Creation. We do not have to be subject-matter experts or philosophers and theologians to discern the morality of the choices before us and to make the right choices for ourselves and our communities. If our motivation is grounded in a deep and abiding faith, then God will provide a way for us to realize the kingdom of peace, love, and mercy here on earth.