Climate change and oil production

By To the editor:

Your December 1 issue features an article by Tim Bradner about permafrost meting as a threat to oil production. It is well-written—but how can you fail to connect the dots between melting permafrost and the climate change that is causing it? Climate change is largely caused by that oil and gas that we supposedly need to keep pumping. The real issue is not that we need to protect oil industry infrastructure from permafrost melt so that can keep pumping more oil and gas. The real issue is that we need to stop pumping oil and gas ASAP, to stop destroying ourselves. When permafrost melts, it releases huge amounts of stored greenhouse gases, and that (in addition to burning oil and gas) helps fuel climate change — which in turn leads to more melting of the permafrost. That’s called a feedback loop, and climate scientists have been warning about it for decades. The results of all this are already causing devastating flooding, drought and wildfires in crucial food-producing regions. Here in Alaska, we see ocean and stream warming and acidification, which threaten all our fisheries. Villages are being forced to move, and subsistence as a way of life is under serious threat. Are we really supposed to accept all this? There are alternatives. We have only been addicted to oil money for about 50 years. Renewable energy actually creates more jobs, and Alaska has enormous potential for that. The transition would be helped along by the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act, (HR763) currently in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the bill could use your support. Still, the first step is to stop treating climate change as a partisan issue, or a vague concern for the future. We need to realize how crazy it is, here in 2019, to keep seeing oil and gas production as our salvation. Its time has passed. We can do better, and we urgently need to.

Phil Somervell, Palmer