Contrary to what some of my readers might believe, I think of myself as an environmentalist. Whatever that means. I loathe louts who litter, for example. Does that make me an environmentalist?
I have been an avid backpacker for decades and believe that some wilderness areas must be preserved regardless of their other resource values. I once spent 2 weeks hiking and camping in the back country of Yellowstone National Park—an unforgettable experience. Yellowstone probably has enough geothermal energy to power a small city, but I don’t want to see a power plant mounted atop Old Faithful. Does that make me an environmentalist?
But people are an integral part of the environment too, an inconvenient truth often overlooked by the environmentalist lobby.
I believe that 92% of the 19 million-acre Arctic National Wildlife Refuge should remain pristine. But the remaining 8%, the Coastal Plain—of which an even smaller sliver, 2,000 acres, would be affected by oil and gas development—lies in an area that has seen human habitation for centuries as well as military and commercial operations for decades. In fact, the Inupiat who have lived there for generations believe that efforts to designate the Coastal Plain as wilderness represents yet another broken promise by the US government to Native Americans and violates their heritage and rights to the land. The Inupiat favor developing the potential 16 billion barrels of oil underlying their land and fear that wilderness designation could uproot them—as has often occurred in the past with this country’s shameful treatment of its first inhabitants. Does that make me anti-environment? Or pro-humanity? It’s all about balance.
Read this excerpt from an online article written for anwr.org by George Tagarook, vice-mayor of the city of Kaktovik, the only village on the ANWR Coastal Plain:
“Step by insidious step, outsiders pushed us aside, set up rules that made it harder and harder for us to use our lands and waters. The worst thing they have done is to declare part of our homelands wilderness. Not only is that a massive insult to say that places where we are have no people, as if we do not even exist, but also the management rules for such places make it impossible for us to continue to use them. Now they want the entire coastal plain made wilderness. That is code for finally removing us from our homelands. That is code for genocide.
“We passionately oppose attempts to expand wilderness designations to our remaining homelands. We suffer not from pollution or harm brought here by the oil and gas industry. It has so far been one of the least disruptive and most positive forces ever to invade Alaska’s Arctic shores. We suffer from the pollution of lies spread far and wide to advance an agenda we do not understand, and from the disrespect shown our positive, progressive people.”
One would think that caring for the needs and desires of the people who actually live in a so-called pristine wilderness area also comes under the heading of preserving environmental values—the human environment, at any rate. (Come to think of it, isn’t “inhabited wilderness” an oxymoron?)
But when you’re trying to balance competing values, rational discussion eludes folks who believe that “humanity is a cancer on the face of the earth” and espouse the slogan “Back to the Pleistocene!”
This line of thought was prompted by a new study by the International Energy Agency of the need for more renewable energy. IEA estimates that nearly 50% of global electricity supplies will have to come from renewable energy sources if the world is to halve CO2 emissions by 2050 “in order to minimize significant and irreversible climate change impacts.”
IEA advises, among other steps, removal of noneconomic barriers, including the tackling of “social acceptance issues,” i.e., the NIMBY (not in my back yard) Syndrome, to unleash this ambitious renewables effort.
The US Energy Information Administration forecasts that renewables’ share of US electricity markets will climb to 12.5% in 2030 from 8.4% in 2007. Well, I’m no math whiz, but I believe that jumping 37.5 percentage points in 20 years after gaining 4.1 points in 23 years pretty much qualifies as unprecedented exponential growth for any energy source.
So where will all that renewable electricity come from? According to EIA, hydropower today accounts for 71% of renewable energy-produced electricity in the US. But the US is No. 2 when it comes to renewable energy production
Hydro is what placed—get ready for it—China at the top of the list of countries producing the most electricity from renewables. China? The same China that renders the Kyoto Treaty moot because its CO2 emissions growth will offset that treaty’s mandated reductions elsewhere? The same China that had to shut down much of its industry so that Olympians wouldn’t keel over in a toxic smog?
Yep. That China. A country that vaulted to the top of the renewables list because of the Three Gorges Dam project, widely condemned as a human and environmental disaster of mind-boggling scale: 1.3 million people displaced, many of which still face resettlement problems; 13 cities, 140 towns, and 1,350 villages flooded; dozens of temples and other cultural and historical landmarks submerged; hundreds of species of flora and fauna threatened; and massive erosion causing landslides whose sediments are threatening one of the world’s largest fisheries in the East China Sea. In addition, the resettlement of hundreds of thousands of farmers is accelerating deforestation and erosion in other, once-pristine areas.
Beijing itself has tacitly acknowledged the environmental damage resulting from Three Gorges but will proceed anyway with plans to make Three Gorges the anchor of a string of 12 similar hydro megabases along the Yangtze River, which ultimately could have as many as 100 hydropower stations. This is the centerpiece of China’s much-vaunted renewables push. Over the years, dam building has displaced 23 million people in China. Beijing didn’t have much trouble overcoming the NIMBY Syndrome; it executed some of the village leaders who protested against the Three Gorges dam.
Just as drilling for oil and gas does not necessarily equate to environmental damage, renewables development is not automatically a good thing for the environment.
This December, my son—a student at the University of Oklahoma College of Law—and I will go backpacking in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas. I’m eyeing the Buffalo National River Wilderness area, an area I’ve backpacked and paddled a canoe in and as pretty a piece of this country as there is. This place has a special resonance personally, and I want it to be the same for my son for a special reason: It will be his last backpacking trip as a single man, as he will be married a few weeks later.
Seeing a pumpjack in that glorious wilderness would be jarring. I wouldn’t like it, but I could ultimately live with it, knowing our desperate need for energy and knowing that it would be gone and the land fully restored in the not-too-distant-future. But what if this scenic treasure disappeared altogether—permanently?
A hypothetical: Would that 50% renewables share of electricity require us to do something as drastic as dam the Buffalo—America’s first National River? Would we go as far as the Chinese are going, all in pursuit of a carbon-free energy future? Would we allow our latest environmental obsession to strip us of our right to enjoy and use this gift of nature? Or would this be the line drawn in the sand against the frenzied, damn-the-consequences push toward renewables as the One True Path?
I think I know what George Tagarook would say.
