"No" to Arctic Drilling

" What is required-and there can be no more perfect moment or action-is for President Obama to use a declaration of Arctic waters as a protected area to stand up to the oil companies, to confront their historical invincibility, and to put the logic of alternative energy and innovative practice back on the table as an essential element of his strategy and legacy through direct and courageous action."

The news continues to report one oil drilling or refining mishap after another. BP is fined billions for the Deepwater Horizon spill. Transocean, the actual operator of that platform, is fined millions for its responsibility in that disaster. BP and Chevron are in lawsuits over refinery explosions and leaks in Texas and California. And, most recently, Shell is embarrassed as its prototype floating rig for Arctic exploratory drilling breaks free from its tow and runs aground in Alaska, perhaps damaged beyond repair, losing millions more, or at least unable to meet the company’s plan for drilling this summer in Arctic waters. These are just the largest and most publicized incidents, only a few among other smaller, reported and unreported incidents of failed management, failed operations, and failed technology.

The oil companies counter with statistics citing all the successful rigs and the world’s compulsive need for more oil and gas, even as the United States, for example, reports supply surpluses and discusses the possibility of becoming an oil exporting nation. To sustain this behavior, and especially to protect supporting subsidies and exemptions, the US Congress is besieged by oil lobbyists and political donations, just as the public via television advertising is inundated with self-justifying assertions of the oil companies’ contributions to education and culture, jobs and taxes.  These arguments, while transparent, are nonetheless effective, at least perhaps until now, a moment when continuing spills and accidents, increasing transparency and revelation of hypocritical behaviors, and the contradictions of their own arguments and actions are increasing political awareness of the companies’ collective fecklessness and hostility to the public interest and the environment. Add to that ever-increasing understanding of the damage of fracking to the land and social fabric and you have a time when the industry, defending itself by doubling down on its bankrupt arguments, may be vulnerable to changing politics and courageous leadership.

US President Barack Obama disappointed environmentalists when, in his first term, he opened the Arctic to exploratory drilling despite all arguments regarding the exceptionally hazardous conditions of operating there and the disastrous consequences of accident for this fragile environment already challenged by climate change, itself a result of the world’s irresponsible consumption of fossil fuels, source of the companies’ profits. Obama’s decision enabled this vicious and unnecessary circle beyond either need or logic.

But the second term need not maintain the circle further, and indeed, as the President has numbered climate change and energy independence among the most important issues for the next four years of his presidency, there is an opportunity to reverse that decision and declare the Arctic immune from such intrusion now and for all time.

This will require leadership. But there are ample precedents in the declaration of vast areas of the ocean under national jurisdiction as protected areas. As noted in a recent World Ocean Radio list of the top ocean events of 2012, Australia has completed protection of its entire coastal zone through such designation, denying exploitation of natural resources, be they oil, minerals, fish or habitat for other marines species, in this vast continental circumference, unless under strict conservation management practices. The United States has its own system of Marine Protected Areas which might serve as both model and instrument for the protection of Arctic waters under American jurisdiction, just as occurred when President George W. Bush created such an area, the largest then in the US system, in the northern Hawaiian Islands.

It is time for politicians to recognize the reality of oil companies’ record of accident and denial, to understand the public interest inherent in responsible protection and management of ocean resources, and to lead based on policy that meets our energy needs through conservation, improved technology, alternative production, sustainable values, and accountable practice. It is not good enough to react to feckless behavior after the fact with fines and regulatory slaps on the wrist; that is not leadership.  What is required --and there can be no more perfect moment or action – for President Obama to use a declaration of Arctic waters as a protected area to stand up to the oil companies, to confront their historical invincibility, and to put the logic of alternative energy and innovative practice back on the table as an essential element of his strategy and legacy through direct and courageous action.

Such an action would have triple benefit: first, it would protect one of the last great unspoiled natural areas of the world and promote comparable action by other nations with Arctic oversight; second, it would send a message to the oil industry, the dominate private sector of the world economy, that it can no longer act against public interest, using public resources and tax-payer subsidy, regardless of financial contributions, casuistry, and indifference to the environment; and third, it would demonstrate a commitment to and beginning of a necessary shift in American policy in international climate negotiations, treaty affirmation such as the Law of the Sea, and national leadership in a world that must abandon its dependence on fossil fuels and confront the agents of that regressive, destructive behavior now in the name of national and world security.  Is that not benefit enough? 

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Peter Neill, Director of the W2O and host of World Ocean Radio, provides coverage of a broad spectrum of ocean issues from science and education to advocacy and exemplary projects.