(Dobbs) We May Not Like Oil Anymore, But We Do Still Need It

We're just not ready yet to be free of fossil fuels.

Joe Biden made a promise about oil exploration when he ran for President: “No more drilling on federal lands, period.” His goal? Independence from fossil fuels.

Then this week he broke the promise. I think the nation’s better off for it.

Not that we don’t want to achieve independence from fossil fuels. We do. It’s a worthy goal and, for the sake of our climate and our health, it’s a vital goal. But we’re just not there yet. We’re just not ready.

Yes, the United States is a net exporter of petroleum, which means the U.S. is energy-independent, but we are not independent in our own lives of fossil fuels. We won’t be for the foreseeable future. Alternative energies including renewables are coming on strong, but we’re nowhere even close to the day when society can wean itself from oil and run entirely on alternatives. Only when that day comes can we kiss fossil fuels goodbye. What’s worse, the war in Ukraine and the Western world’s shift away from dependence on Russian oil make that kiss even more distant than before.

So when Biden’s Interior Department announced the decision this week to approve new drilling following exploration on federal lands, namely, a vast tract of tundra north of the Arctic Circle called the National Petroleum Reserve Alaska— at almost 25 million acres, it is the nation’s biggest remaining range of untouched territory—  it was the right decision to make. Hard though it is to accept, Biden was right to break his promise. Our nation has to travel two paths simultaneously: continue the push for a society built on alternative fuels, but satisfy the demand for fossil fuels until we’re there. Unless we give up our cars and quit flying between cities and stop buying products from American factories and sit in cold rooms at home, those two paths are a necessary compromise.

There are three issues at play here. One is political: the broken promise. When he ran for president, Biden won the support of environmentalists because he gave his word and thought he could keep it but now, since he didn’t, they’re raking him over the coals.

The second issue is about the impact on our climate, our air, and our health when this Alaskan petroleum is burned from coast to coast. The government concedes that over 30 years, it would release between 240 and 280 million metric tons of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, which will only elevate our position as the second biggest polluter on the planet. Even Interior itself issued an environmental impact statement a month and a half ago that said, “The Department has substantial concerns about the… project.”

The third is its harm to the tundra.

The president of an environmental group called Earthjustice said Biden’s decision “hands over one of the most fragile, intact ecosystems in the world” to ConocoPhillips, which will do the drilling. She is right. There will be consequences. But if we still depend on fossil fuels and won’t be fixing that problem tomorrow, I have to ask, what better place to get more?

Yes, it is isolated, yes, it is pristine, and yes, the Reserve is home to migratory birds and huge herds of caribou, which is another name for undomesticated reindeer. Would we be better served if more of Texas, or North Dakota, or New Mexico, or other petroleum-producing states were exploited for oil instead, with more rigs going up within 500 feet of people’s homes and children’s schools? I’ve been to Alaska above the Arctic Circle. There are native villages to be sure— the nearest to the National Petroleum Reserve Alaska is about 150 miles away— but by and large, while there will be pipelines and roads and the drilling pads themselves, it is because this land is so large and so remote that wells can be drilled with minimal human impact.

Twice on stories, I went to the oil field at Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, the largest in North America and just a hundred miles to the east of the National Petroleum Reserve Alaska (with the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge on the other side). I’ve seen caribou wander into the Prudhoe Bay fields, despite the trucks and the noise and the activity that come with the project. The way I’ve always put it is, they probably don’t like the intrusion of the drilling rigs any more than we like it when a building is erected on open space, but that hasn’t stopped them from procreating and prospering. 

The President’s visceral vision is for a society free of fossil fuels. It’s mine too. But as he said in an interview Monday night, “It’s not like you can cut everything off immediately.”

I wish it were otherwise. I wish we all had electric cars in our garages and solar panels on our roofs and wind farms outside every city and an abundance of water running through our hydroelectric dams. But we don’t. Until that changes, untapped fields like the ones just approved in the National Petroleum Reserve Alaska will have to tide us over. With the potential for the production of 600 million barrels of oil, they are not the be-all-and-end-all. But they help us reach the day when we don’t need them at all.

Over almost five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He has covered presidencies, politics, and the U.S. space program at home, and wars, natural disasters, and other crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, and as a 36-year resident of Colorado, a place in the Denver Press Club Hall of Fame.