In Approving The Willow Oil Project, Biden Chooses Reality Over Posturing

Many of us no doubt felt schadenfreude at the story that Greta Thunberg was leading protests against a windpower installation which impinged on the livelihood of indigenous Sami reindeer herders. This hopefully served as a lesson for her that the energy transition is a lot messier than many advocates claim and injects a little realism into the stances of many activists (not that I’m hopeful).

Unfortunately, posturing seems to be more prevalent than reasoned policy-making in many circles. Environmentalists decried the Biden Administration’s approval of the Alaskan oil project named Willow, with Earthjustice describing this and similar plans for leases in the Gulf of Mexico as a “carbon bomb” and Evergreenaction saying, “This decision is an unacceptable government giveaway to the fossil fuel industry, directly at odds with President Biden’s climate leadership.”

Of course, this ignores the simple fact that producing more oil and gas is not what drives climate change, consuming it does. Not producing it in any one place will not reduce consumption, any more than burning a coca farm in Colombia cuts cocaine usage in the United States. Needless to say, attacking oil companies is always popular, especially when they are making high profits. The same activists remain silent about farmers, whose incomes are now soaring even as they sell a commodity more vital than oil.

This demand for perfect answers is part of a more general problem, namely the general tendency towards absolutism in policy-making. For example, politicians often promise to eliminate hunger, poverty or homelessness, despite the persistence of those problems throughout human history. In some ways, this is treating problems as binary, that is, they can or cannot be fixed instead of as a continuum, where they are made worse or better.

Some are to blame for referring to ‘zero emissions’ for electric vehicles and/or renewables, which is misleading as neither truly avoid emissions. Indeed, honest analysts refer to ‘zero emission vehicles’ as ‘remote emission vehicles,’ since the power used to recharge them is never emission free—to say nothing of the very energy intensive manufacturing process. (Even nuclear has some emissions, largely to due to the steel and concrete in their construction.)

And this pretense of ‘zero emissions’ demonstrates how the (alleged) perfect is the enemy of the good. Converting a coal-fired power plant to natural gas is opposed on the grounds that it would reduce, but not eliminate, emissions, as if building a massive renewable power project involves no emissions.

The talk now of ‘net zero’ emissions is a step forward, since it accepts that some emissions are acceptable—if they are offset by carbon capture in some form. Of course, that is an artificial target more or less arbitrarily chosen and now treated as binary by activists. 1.5 is success, 1.6 is failure (and apocalyptic) when in fact, the difference between 1.5 and 1.6 is not very significant.

But many oppose all consumption of fossil fuels. Quite a few governments are announcing bans on internal combustion engine automobiles and natural gas appliances, thinking consumer choice can be legislated away. It will be easier to persecute and prosecute those driving oil-fueled vehicles than those consuming illicit narcotics, but that probably means that public pressure will reverse such bans.

The approval of the Willow Project, at odds with Biden’s campaign rhetoric, is one of many cases where a politician once in government is forced to be more responsible and deal with the messiness that is reality instead of the idealistic visions that often dominate public discussion. Whether he pays a political price for maturity will become clearer in next year’s election.