Oil and gas, and what matters

We have seen suggestions, in this paper, that we need to protect the oil and gas industry. I’d suggest that our priority should be protecting ourselves, and protecting what we love about Alaska, not protecting an industry. Especially not an industry that has become a threat to us all, with the excuse of “jobs” and competing with other places economically.

But what about the jobs? Having worked with oil and gas drilling professionals, I have too much respect for them to believe that’s all they can ever do. As new industries grow, more job openings will appear. In fact, renewable energy creates far more jobs than oil, coal and gas. If some retraining is needed, let’s make sure that happens. That’s where Alaska can be a true leader and show the kind of forward-looking policies that could be a model for the nation. We have plenty of renewable energy to be tapped. Let’s develop that instead of pumping more oil and gas as if there was no tomorrow. We should be competing in those areas, not competing in self-destruction.

We are out of time. For 50 years, oil and gas grew Alaska’s economy, and the industry has provided essential resources. But the time for that is over: climate change threatens everything we care about, and every barrel of oil that we pump contributes to that ongoing disaster. It’s not about saving “the planet,” whatever that means. The planet will continue, but will become more and more uninhabitable for us and many other living things. The economic costs of fixing the damage are already huge. It’s not an “environmental issue.” It’s an economic issue, a food supply issue, a refugee issue, an infrastructure issue, a quality-of-life issue, a national security issue and a health issue.

Alaska is not a big oil tank. Its true resources are its fisheries, its wildlife, and the possibility of experiencing true wilderness. Those are irreplaceable. Let’s not chip away at those or destroy them by building more oil and gas infrastructure in wilderness areas, and making climate change and ocean acidification even worse. How many Alaskans really want more and more of the state to be covered with industrial infrastructure like parts of Texas, Oklahoma and California? Not many of us, I’d guess. I won’t even talk about the inevitable oil spills and pipeline leaks.

There are ways to approach the problem while building our economy. Senators Sullivan and Murkowski and Congressman Young need to hear from us about this. Every effective means should be on the table; the main message is, “let’s do something now, and something big.” The key is to encourage the development of renewable energy and make Alaska a leader and competitor in that area.

One promising approach is suggested by the Citizens’ Climate Lobby (see citizensclimatelobby.org for details.) We call it carbon fee-and-dividend. As a strictly market based solution that does not grow government, it has support from conservatives and liberals, Republicans and Democrats. It is not a tax: the government does not keep the money or decide how to use it. Instead, it would collect fees from resource-extraction companies, per the amount of fossil fuels extracted, and send all that money to households, similar to our PFD.

This is certainly not the only useful approach, but economic analyses show it can tip the scales toward developing renewable energy, and it can be supported equally by right- and left- leaning people.

We need to compete on forward-looking development, not backward-looking and destructive industries. And we need to keep our focus on what we really need and care about. We need to protect our people, not corporations.

Phil Somervell, Ph.D. is a retired public-health scientist and a resident of Palmer. He is a volunteer with the Citizens’ Climate Lobby.