Like many of you, I’ve been watching the spasmodic reaction to President Obama’s offshore oil drilling announcement. Some of you probably contributed to said reaction. I have to admit, I’m not nearly as upset about this as most of my fellow greenies. It will likely take a long time–at least 10 years, by most estimates I’ve seen–for any oil to be produced from these areas, and no one has a solid estimate of how much oil is down there. (There are estimates, to be sure, but we should consider them all to have a +/- 80% implicit fudge factor.)
I have no delusions that we’ve found a way to extract oil from deep offshore areas with such precision that we’ll never have a major spill, and I’m one of the last people on this planet who needs to be reminded about the CO2 emissions of that additional oil consumption. Many people are running around proclaiming that this is a “political move”, since it will have (we’re guessing) a negligible impact on prices and a very small impact on reducing the US’ reliance on imported oil. To those people, I say, “Well, duh.” Some are saying it’s a really stupid political move, because the Republicans will take any offered olive branch and beat you with it until you knock them down and kick them into submission. “Well, duh, squared.”
I’ve been saying since the very earliest days of this blog that humanity would very like use all the oil we can pump out of the ground, plus an astonishing amount we can cook and shovel out (oil shale and/or tar sands). Peak oil is no less an issue just because we’re finally waking up to the immensity and urgency of the climate change problem. Consider this announcement from Obama as supporting evidence for that “we’ll use it all” prediction, as well as just one more nasty thing people on the part of the ideological spectrum I and most of you inhabit will have to live with.
Even with all that hanging over our heads, there’s a much bigger, nastier problem America has to deal with, as Howard Fineman points out in Forget oil, coal is Obama’s thorn:
Forget whatever else you hear about energy policy, the real fight – and the real political problem – this year in Congress will be how to deal with our nagging reliance on the most abundant component of our carbon-based patrimony.
We can talk until we’re blue in the face about offshore drilling, wind power, natural gas, and energy conservation … but the short-term drift of history still dictates a heavy reliance on the dirtiest and deadliest of all fuels: coal.
The big question in the energy bill – if there is one – is how and whether Congress will ask the American people to pay for the cost of controlling the environmental consequences of that reliance.
At its core, the president’s energy vision calls for switching our transportation system from oil to plug-in electricity. But 45 percent of all electricity in the country is still generated by coal-fired power plants. In other words, we run the real risk of merely replacing one polluting and increasingly scarce fuel, petroleum, with an abundant but even more environmentally troublesome one, coal.
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The hard part is going to be convincing senators from coal-producing and/or electricity-exporting states to go along with any sort of carbon tax.
States with power plants that generate electricity from coal read like a roster of presidential swing states. Among them: Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Missouri and North Carolina. And other states with major coal commitments include: Georgia, Arizona, Kentucky and Wyoming.
Getting 60 votes for some kind of carbon-pollution tax, even if it’s in the most attenuated “cap-and-trade” form, will be next to impossible.
(Note that running a car on coal-generated electrons is still cleaner than running an equivalent oil-powered car, but not by much.)
The problems with coal are legion–mountain top removal or dangerous underground mining, the release of methane, mercury, and heavy metals, CO2 and sulfur dioxide emissions, etc.
In 2007, the US emitted over two billion tons of CO2 just from burning coal, which accounted for 36% of our total CO2 emissions. And nearly all of that coal was used for electricity generation.
We have two choices with coal: Figure out how to burn it vastly cleaner than we do it now, or stop using it. The first option is a logistical and economic (and therefore a public policy) nightmare, thanks to the hundreds of coal plants that were sited and built with no concern whatsoever for CCS (carbon capture and sequestration). And as for stopping altogether–good luck with that one. Any solution not only has to clear the state-level hurdles Fineman mentions, but it will also have to overcome the political clout of the coal companies and the railroads, which derive a huge portion of their revenue from hauling coal around the country.
And once you figure out how to get the US off its coal kick, you can move on to China, India, and Russia.
So, remind me again why this offshore oil thing is worth having baskets of kittens over?
Very well put Lou. Quite frankly I’ve been a bit astonished at the bad reactions people have had to this. Obviously this is one of the opening moves (removing the drill baby drill club from the hands of the Republicans – which was effective with the general public) in a push for the climate change/energy bill in the Senate – and I see it as a good signal the administration is getting serious about that bill, finally.
While I would prefer we would not open the additional drilling, its a small price to pay to increase the odds of getting a climate bill through (as opposed to not getting it at all).
You’re right though, as our economy is sucked dry by oil prices in the future, we’ll suck every bit it we can just to try and get those prices down or keep them from going up.
It reminds me of the saga of the Blue-fin Tuna, which was up for some sort of endangered species protection recently at a world meeting to decide those sorts of things – now that there’s so few of them, they’re worth significantly more than before so the pressure to keep hauling them out of the water is significantly higher in the countries that prize them – they didn’t get any protection and will probably be gone in a decade or so.
Remind me how on earth we will limit to 2C?
(I thought coal electricity was worse on emissions than oil?)