A federal judge has approved a first-of-its-kind settlement requiring the government to suspend 38,000 acres of oil and gas leases in Montana so it can gauge how drilling contributes to climate change. At issue are the large amounts of greenhouse gases emitted by drilling machinery and practices such as venting natural gas into the atmosphere.
But environmentalists, who sued when the Montana leases were sold in 2008, say the industry allows too much waste and uses inefficient technologies. Under the deal approved March 18th byU.S. District Judge Donald Molloy in Missoula, the government will suspend 61 leases within 90 days and put them through a new round of environmental studies.
And seriously
What was the Obama team thinking? - Frank Ackerman
This administration is full of people who are way too smart to believe that offshore drilling will supply any noticeable part of our long-term energy needs. In the overly clever mode of partisan triangulation — is there any other mode in Washington? — it smells like a concession designed to get a few Republican votes for a climate change bill. Oddly enough, our national policy is now to increase fossil fuel production in the hopes of winning support for reducing fossil fuel consumption.
We can learn a painful lesson from the sorry state of energy policy today — and it's not just that the hypothetical-filibuster rule, allowing 41 senators to effortlessly stop a vote, prevents Congress from taking action on almost everything.
Reflecting on the fact that there's only so much oil, some environmental advocates have adopted the "peak oil" theory: When the world as a whole passes the peak and production starts to fall (as it already has for the United States), the fast-growing scarcity of oil will create a deeper crisis, forcing us to change our ways. As Tower of Power said, "Soon enough the world will watch the wells run dry." Although there's only so much conventional oil, there is a much larger amount of oil shale, tar sands, extra-heavy oil, and other geological formations from which oil and gas can be extracted — at the cost of vast environmental damage. .... Solving our energy problems, without a change in direction, will lead to increasingly costly and environmentally destructive production — either deep offshore, or deep in the rocks below existing communities and watersheds. We need a tax (or a fee resulting from an allowance system) on energy, to keep the cost to consumers high enough to encourage conservation, while holding the price for producers low enough to discourage the pursuit of the worst fossil fuel deposits. And the real answer to our energy problems? As Tower of Power told us back in the day, "Alternate sources of power must be found." It's got a beat; you could dance to it. - Frank Ackerman
We can learn a painful lesson from the sorry state of energy policy today — and it's not just that the hypothetical-filibuster rule, allowing 41 senators to effortlessly stop a vote, prevents Congress from taking action on almost everything.
Reflecting on the fact that there's only so much oil, some environmental advocates have adopted the "peak oil" theory: When the world as a whole passes the peak and production starts to fall (as it already has for the United States), the fast-growing scarcity of oil will create a deeper crisis, forcing us to change our ways. As Tower of Power said, "Soon enough the world will watch the wells run dry." Although there's only so much conventional oil, there is a much larger amount of oil shale, tar sands, extra-heavy oil, and other geological formations from which oil and gas can be extracted — at the cost of vast environmental damage. .... Solving our energy problems, without a change in direction, will lead to increasingly costly and environmentally destructive production — either deep offshore, or deep in the rocks below existing communities and watersheds. We need a tax (or a fee resulting from an allowance system) on energy, to keep the cost to consumers high enough to encourage conservation, while holding the price for producers low enough to discourage the pursuit of the worst fossil fuel deposits. And the real answer to our energy problems? As Tower of Power told us back in the day, "Alternate sources of power must be found." It's got a beat; you could dance to it. - Frank Ackerman
