Foolish to have expected anything else.
Playing Chicken With Hothouse Extinction — Obama’s Shameful Shell Drilling Approval
Earlier
this week President Obama made one of the worst decisions of his
presidency.
He decided to ignore the concerns of thousands of protesters and more
than 60 percent of the American public over the issue of climate
change. He decided to approve a dangerous plunging of new wells into
unstable, clathrate-laden seabeds in the Arctic. Effectively, he’s
deciding to play a dangerous game of chicken with a natural world
that’s been riled and wounded by climate change. And in this game
he puts us all at risk.
It’s
a bad move that sends all the wrong signals. It demonstrates an
attachment to the old, limited resource dominance based, policies
that cause so many problems and that keep us dependent on fossil
fuels for far too long.
(Shell
is now approved to poke holes into the Arctic seabed in a mad,
climate-destroying, quest for oil. The Arctic, overall, is a terribly
risky place for drilling. Ice, storms, and drilling regions laden
with explosive and warming clathrate all result in increased risks
for blow outs, destruction of equipment, loss of life and related oil
spills. But the worst threat of all comes from the resource itself.
The future of a life-sustaining world and the future of continued
fossil fuel burning are completely incompatible. Image
source: Greenpeace/Mark
Meyer.)
To
this point, each new productive well, each new coal plant, each new
gas fired plant, each new internal combustion engine extends the
lifespan of fossil fuel burning. And that’s something we shouldn’t
be investing in at the moment. We are pushing well past the dangerous
400 parts per million CO2 threshold. Adding all other greenhouse
gasses together, the gross heat trapping is now equivalent to nearly
485 parts per million CO2e. Even maintaining these thresholds will
raise the world’s temperatures by as much as 3.8 C over 500 years
(and possibly break the 2 C threshold this Century). And that’s if
the world’s carbons stores, long buried in ice beneath glaciers,
permafrost and cooler seas, long kept safe within healthy forests, do
not release through the warming and burning that will come under such
a major jump in temperatures.
We
have a window now. A brief window where we can draw down carbon
emissions fast enough to allow some of that excess of heat trapping
gasses to fall out. To give our ailing oceans and biosphere the
chance to take up some of that carbon and prevent this very high risk
scenario. But taking advantage of that window involves saying
farewell to the age of fossil fuel burning.
So
it’s the height of shame and short-sightedness for Obama to have
approved the Shell project, especially after so many worked so hard
to put his feet to the fire. So many people — who put their necks
on the line in acts of noble, nonviolent protest to protect their
children and loved ones from more carbon spewing oil wells sunk into
the warming Arctic seabed — just got the message loud and clear
from Obama: ‘we’re not really too concerned about our future.’
(During
late July and early August, protesters in Portland managed to briefly
delay Shell’s drilling expedition. It was a loud and clear signal
from the public to Obama — we don’t want the future climate
wreckage Shell is attempting to help lock in. It was a noble plea
Obama has now blithely ignored. Image source: Greenpeace/Tim
Aubrey.)
Playing
Dangerous Games of Climate Chicken
Obama
has done many good things with regards to climate change. Many things
madcatter, drill, baby, drill republicans would have never done. He’s
using the EPA to regulate carbon, he’s committed to cutting overall
carbon emissions by more than 30 percent through 2030 (which is, I
have to say a good move, but not fast enough), he’s pushed CAFE
standards through the roof, and he’s helped to drive solar energy
prices lower even faster than they would have been lowered otherwise.
He’s at least helped to delay the Keystone Pipeline.
But,
sometimes, as with fracking, as with other new pipeline construction,
and as with the Shell Arctic drilling expedition, his policies cut
against the grain of a necessarily rapid reduction in carbon
emissions. Such backsliding is shameful and there is, at this time
when human caused climate change is displacing people, on average at
the rate of 8,000 each day, when heatwaves are now killers that
stretch hospitals to the breaking point, when we have crossed or are
crossing the Eemian boundary which implies a 20-25 feet of sea level
rise for our cities and islands, when James Hansen’s storms are
brewing in the North Atlantic, and when a monster El Nino is cracking
wide the Pacific to ooze out yet more heat, there is absolutely no
excuse for it.
Obama
is not like republicans. He, unlike that mad beyond nightmares
political set, is at least influenceable, at least somewhat sensitive
to the great dangers we’ve stoked to new life. For his support
relies, in large part, on those of us who are very concerned about
climate change. And for the backward action of the Shell approval our
appropriate response is shaming. We need a leader who’s a climate
hawk — not someone who’s going to risk our future and our
children’s future in a dangerously irresponsible game of climate
chicken.
Links:
Hat
Tip to Caroline
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