The environmental community is missing a major opportunity to help the Obama administration build support for its climate change policies by accusing the administration of being hypocritical in its simultaneous support for oil exploration in the Chukchi Sea. By linking these two issues, environmental groups are raising questions about the administration’s climate commitment, giving voters undecided on the issue a reason to remain so. Plus, they are alienating people who see these two issues as separate—people who support oil exploration and development even as they support climate action.
Indeed, these two issues are linked only through a strictly environmental lens. The United States is under a legal obligation to let Shell drill (now that the lease has been approved), so long as the company meets all applicable regulations—regulations that were made much tighter than those for drilling elsewhere in the United States and its waters. Of course, the risk of a spill is always present, but weighed against this risk are the potential benefits to energy security and to Alaska. And the Obama administration recognizes that there must be some reliance on traditional fuels during any successful transition to alternatives.
More importantly, oil is a global commodity and prices are determined in a global market. Future demand will be met somehow—possibly by development in riskier places, by companies less able to mitigate risks and deal with problems, and in regulatory regimes less strict than ours. What’s more, because of the world market, opening up a new area for exploration and eventual development will not, in and of itself, increase carbon dioxide emissions, as it may replace other new oil that would be more expensive to produce.
Indeed, if the United States could do the right thing and implement a carbon tax on all fossil fuels—something that can only happen with overwhelming public support—that oil in the Chukchi Sea might never see the light of day because the economics will work against it.
But criticizing the president—the commander in chief in confronting climate challenges—for approving Arctic drilling (after he just made significant progress on addressing carbon dioxide emissions through the Clean Power Plan) does not help build the public confidence and support needed to secure ongoing and significant progress on climate change.
