Moot

When Don Brunell wrote his essay “Striking it Rich in North Dakota” (Gazette, Oct. 18) he must have been wearing his rose-tinted glasses, or blinders, or both. For one thing, the statement that fracking is safe and actually protects aquifers is extremely questionable. But beyond that, implicit in his editorial is the idea that increased petroleum production is in itself a wonderful thing—a boon to the economy and an overall win-win situation.

Brunell suggests that the US has “more than a 200-year supply of crude oil.” This, presumably, is at our current level of usage.

But if we continue burning petroleum at this rate, we won’t last 200 years.

Let’s look at the estimated 10 billion barrels of oil in the Bakken formation alone.

A barrel of crude weighs around 159 kilograms.

Of this amount, on average, about 2/3 (or 100 kg) is refined into products that will be burnt.

Each kg of oil burnt produces 3.17 kg of carbon dioxide (as the carbon combines with oxygen taken from the atmosphere).

So the 10 billion barrels of oil can be expected to kick three trillion, 170 billion kilograms (or nearly seven billion pounds) of CO2 into the atmosphere.

And this is a small portion of worldwide production and use.

Well over 95% of scientists are convinced that the major impetus to our accelerating global warming is caused by our burning of fossil fuels. Chortling about huge new extractable reserves of oil is not a cause for celebration. And what is sadder still is that both major presidential candidates are ignoring this elephant in the room. Each prattles about “energy self-sufficiency” and “new techniques” of oil extraction (e.g., fracking) as solutions to some of our economic woes. In truth, it is very bad news. No, Mr. Brunell, adding your one million jobs in the oil and gas industry is nothing to celebrate. It merely hastens environmental apocalypse.

The fact is that we will not quit until we have combusted every last ounce of oil we possibly can; but by then we will have long since passed the environmental tipping point for global warming. And all our prattle about the economic benefits of oil reserves and pipelines will be, as we ourselves will be, moot.

Dick Warwick,

Oakesdale