Worrisome news aplenty

Got out of bed the other day, read up on the news and thought seriously about getting back under the covers and setting the alarm for Groundhog Day.

The drums of impeachment were sounding in Washington, the world seemed to be heading for environmental disaster, small countries with nuclear weapons were facing off against each other in the Middle East.

But I decided to stay up and face the day when I remembered that things might not be as bad as they look. Whether President Donald Trump faces impeachment is an open question. And even if he is, it’s unlikely he would be convicted. Besides, the whole thing will play out during an election campaign that will cast doubt on the entire effort. At most it could complicate his life, which is already “interesting” by most standards.

And a few promising things are happening on the environmental front. One is that an icebreaker and an impressive team of scientists is headed for the Arctic ice and will drift around the top of the world for about a year to study what is happening there.

Another is that some oil and gas companies, notably ConocoPhillips, are committed to understanding the problem and to reducing their contributions of greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere. That will be a difficult problem to solve and consumers will ultimately pay for whatever is done. It seems unlikely that the world will be able to get beyond fossil fuels anytime soon, but getting a better understanding of the problem and getting on with whatever can be one in the way of mitigation seems increasingly likely.

Then there was the worldwide protest in which Greta Thunberg, a 16-year-old Swedish girl gave an angry-sounding speech to the United Nations during its Climate Action Summit. Whether she succeeded in her effort to get action remains to be seen, but her efforts were widely reported. About 250,000 people demonstrated in the streets of New York and millions of people across the planet heard and cheered her efforts.

Whatever changes occur in the oil and gas industry, Alaska seems to be in a promising place for both the short and long terms. Oil will continue to be a major energy source for years to come and Alaska will be an important producer as new North Slope projects come online in the years ahead. That will mean jobs and state revenue for decades.

The federal lease sale expected later this year in the coastal plain area of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge might or might not prove ANWR to be a major producing area, but interest in the sale will hopefully be high and good things could happen. We shall see on that one.

And if the world does manage to reduce its consumption of oil in the coming years, one likely substitute will be natural gas which is a fossil fuel but produces far less emissions than oil. And Alaska has gas in abundance, much of it discovered in the search for oil.

Though the world currently has a surplus of gas and prices are too low to justify building a pipeline, if gas becomes a viable substitute for oil the demand for it would rise and so would its price. Moving Alaska’s gas to market would be profitable for the leaseholders and a financial boon for the State of Alaska.

The fact that small and volatile countries are armed with nuclear weapons should make everyone nervous. The threat of mutual destruction kept the Cold War from becoming a hot one, but that resulted from both sides having leaders capable of understanding the consequences and avoiding rash decisions. The disastrous attack of 9/11 should be a warning that bad decisions are possible and a future attack could be an even greater tragedy.

If this morning’s news has you considering going back to bed, be advised that there is no Groundhog Day setting on most alarm clocks.