Burning the Future

It’s quite a job these days to keep track of the missteps of our flail-away president. First, he wants to slap tariffs on Mexican products entering the US because they aren’t doing all he wants to curb illegal immigration.  He proposes to lay a 5 % tariff on all goods from Mexico starting June 10, with a provision that if they don’t then come around as he wants, the tariffs will increase 5% each month up to 25%.  Where he gets the authority to do this is apparently a mystery. The President of Mexico, Andres Lopez Obrador, has replied to Trump by saying "Social problems don't get resolved with duties or coercive measures. I don't believe ... in 'an eye for an eye.'" Not many people think tariffs are a good tool in economic policy. Using them to punish Mexico for matters related to immigration highlights Trump’s infantile psyche. His impulsive notion of how to force Mexico to comply with his wishes is just one more example of his lack of strategic thought as an element in governing.

We have another glimpse into the limits of the President’s understanding of important facts about the world in the comments he made recently in an interview with Piers Morgan on “Good Morning Britain.” Trump signaled that after a 90-minute meeting with climate advocate Charles, Prince of Wales, he’s still unconvinced about the scientific consensus that the climate is warming.  He’s quoted as saying, “I believe that there’s a change in weather, and I think it changes both ways,” Trump said. “Don’t forget it used to be called global warming. That wasn’t working. Then it was called climate change. Now it’s actually called extreme weather because with extreme weather, you can’t miss.” You can see from Trump’s language that he’s not really thinking about the physical realities of global climate change.  Rather, he’s playing word games to jockey himself into a do-nothing position on a matter of grave importance and urgency for the planet.

Trump’s presence in the halls of power will eventually end.  Unfortunately, as the years unfold, we will be faced with the legacy of his actions or lack of them.  We’ll have to live with his failures—our failures, in a sense, for not having forestalled his election in 2016—as we play catchup. The best we can do now is mount vigorous election campaigns in the 2020 elections.  We must push on all fronts, from county commissioners, mayors and city councils to state representatives, US Congressional seats, and of course the presidential race.  Let’s all commit to being active!

Trump’s administration is not alone in moving us toward climate disaster.  Here’s an example from the sector dealing with energy production: It’s common knowledge that we are in the midst of a huge boom in drilling for oil and gas. The United States seems now to be the world’s largest producer of crude oil, having passed Saudi Arabia and Russia.  That would seem to make us the world’s largest oil-based contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. Isn’t it frustrating that our President brags about this?  We're headed into climate disaster and the United States is leading the pack!

It turns out that two major factors in the US dominance are the Permian Basin in Texas and the Bakken region in North Dakota and Montana, both rich sources of shale oil deposits.  In addition to crude oil, the wells there produce huge quantities of natural gas, principally methane, which of course is also a fossil fuel.  Therein lies a problem: the amounts of methane and other gaseous pollutants that accompany the crude oil is often more than the markets can deal with in terms of pipeline capacities and storage capacity.  So, why not just vent the excess to the atmosphere? That would not be good; on a molecule-by-molecule basis, methane is about 25 times more powerful as an atmospheric warming gas than carbon dioxide.  So they flare it—burn it, as shown in the figure—creating

carbon dioxide and other pollutants.  Brilliant! Not only are the fossil fuels being wasted, in the process they’re being converted into CO₂! 

Both Texas and New Mexico have statutes that prohibit this waste of natural resources, but until recently there don’t seem to have been any penalties levied. This is not a small thing.  It’s been estimated that the fuel wasted in flaring would be sufficient to power a medium-sized nation.  There’s also the interesting fact that shale oil mining itself is not environmentally friendly.  First, there’s the inevitable leakage of methane occurring at the wells.  Secondly, creating multiple landfills for the cuttings, contaminated soils, muds and other types of oilfield waste produced in the Permian Basin seems to be a pretty big business.

 

I may be a hopeless optimist, but I have the feeling that people are beginning to wonder whether all of this mighty effort to generate boundless quantities of greenhouse gases and other pollutants is in society’s best interests.  There’s an interesting story in Energywire from March 2019, to the effect that the largest energy companies, Shell, BP and Exxon are pressing the EPA to regulate methane emissions.  These same companies fought efforts to impose regulations on methane emissions during the Obama administration, and cheered the Trump administration rollbacks of environmental rules generally. Apparently the people at the top are thinking that they need to pay attention to public sentiment.  The CEO of BP, Bob Dudley, was quoted as saying,  "Around the globe, tens of thousands of young people, maybe even hundreds of thousands, will take part in what is being called a youth-led climate strike. These young people are on the cusp of being able to vote. They're tomorrow's legislators, regulators, jurists, and consumers, of course. There's a rising tide of concern on many fronts about the lack of progress on climate issues, and I would say not just concern, but anger," 

That’s a different song than we were hearing from BP and the other energy giants not long ago. I suppose we should be grateful for whatever change of direction we see, but we can anticipate that industries’ feeble attempts at addressing this colossal issue will be consistent with maintaining corporate profits, not the bold changes in direction and timeliness we need. Rest assured, the oil giants are still planning on remaining the number one source of petroleum on the planet!  The philosophy of profits at any cost works against a long-term vision that could result in a massive rethinking of energy generation and use.  We live in a world of economic models in which success is measured by GDP, not by whether human society will come to terms with the destruction we’ve caused and the dire prospects that face us.  

In a recent critique of neoliberalism, economist Joseph Stiglitz says, “Slow economic growth, rising inequality, financial instability, and environmental degradation are problems born of the market, and thus cannot and will not be overcome by the market on its own. Governments have a duty to limit and shape markets through environmental, health, occupational safety, and other types of regulation.”  So it seems that it all comes down to politics.