Gotta love the blog in this morning’s FT by Masa Serdarevic entitled “Oil drilling in the Arctic?  Blame the bankers” ( http://blogs.ft.com/energy-source/2010/08/25/oil-drilling-in-the-arctic-blame-the-bankers/).  For those who think Arctic drilling controversies begin and end in ANWR, note that this one relates to exploration and production in Arctic Greenland.

Visitors to ANWR regularly note that there seems in their experience no better place to put an industrial energy development complex (doesn’t that sound better than “drill for oil”?) than that remote and desolate place.  And Arctic Greenland is no vacation spot either, of course.

But Serdarevic makes the even more interesting point that “the environmentalists’ outrage at taxpayer money financing oil drilling bizarrely stops with the Arctic. Drilling in Rajasthan – where Cairn in fact gets most of its oil – doesn’t seem to be a problem. Yet why is it less acceptable to drill near barely-populated frozen landmass than in the middle of India, where actual people may be affected by the drilling operations?”

And then he answers his own question:

“Maybe because polar bears are much cuter than people?”

Well, yes, but isn’t the point really that blocking drilling anywhere anyhow is truly the far left agenda?  Start with blocking production in a “pristine wilderness” (aka desolate wasteland) and then bring in “environmental justice” concerns to block development near people as well.

And in a democracy, the “professional left” can mobilize support, contribute money to politicians, and seek to advance their agenda — and the fact that it’s by misleading the public gets lost in the noise.  Globally, however, the market works its will, as Serdarevic notes:

“The whole protest is futile, mainly because it misses the crucial point. Why is all this is happening? Because consumers want oil, and they want it more than they care about the arctic or any other part of the world except their back yard.”

Whether these protests are futile or not is debatable.  But the real issue is that until alternatives exist that approach conventional energy in price and performance, the clearly correct answer is to continue producing conventional energy — with appropriate health and environmental safeguards — while taxing its use to help advance those cleaner alternatives.

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