Published on Friday, September 7, 2001 in the Boston Globe
Cold Facts on Alaska Oil
Editorial
 
THE BLUE-GREEN alliance between labor and environmentalists frayed badly over
the vote in Congress last month to authorize drilling in the Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge. Thirty-six Democrats voted for the Bush administration
initiative, many on the strength of lobbying by the Teamsters and other union
officials who said it would create 750,000 jobs. Now a new report by an
economist with strong ties to labor debunks that figure. It should help
redirect the national debate toward the common goal of developing permanent
jobs that do not despoil a pristine wilderness.

The study the Teamsters used to back their claims was commissioned in 1990 by
the American Petroleum Institute. It projected jobs created not just by the
drilling itself, but by the ripple effect throughout the whole economy of
falling energy prices presumably achieved through new supplies of oil
uncovered at the Arctic refuge. But the study overestimated the amount the
oil would represent on the world market, according to Dean Baker of the
Center for Economic and Policy Research.

Using current estimates from the Energy Information Agency, Baker found that
the earlier study overstated the size of the potential oil flows by a factor
of three. Even with the multiplier effect, Baker estimates that only 46,300
new jobs could be attributed to opening the refuge to drilling.

Another flaw with the Petroleum Institute's report is that it assumed none of
the other oil-producing nations would take action to prop up fuel prices,
counteracting much of the projected benefit to the American economy.
Historically, OPEC's behavior in the face of oil gluts hardly supports the
theory that those nations would sit idly by.

Third, even the original study admitted that the jobs created would be
temporary. Peak production is expected to last less than 10 years, after
which the benefit to the economy would taper off dramatically.

Taken together, these flawed assumptions undermine the argument that swayed
some House Democrats to support drilling. As the Senate prepares to vote on
the matter this fall - Energy Committee hearings begin next week - members
should stick to more recent and defensible analyses.

It is important to remember, for example, that jobs created in clean energy
technologies produce multiplier effects throughout the economy, too. The
Department of Energy has estimated that investments in renewable energy
research could create a $3 billion export market by 2010, creating 100,000
jobs.

Senator Edward Kennedy, who opposes drilling in the Arctic refuge, is the
strongest friend labor has in Washington. In the coming weeks his leadership
will be needed to show that jobs can be compatible with a sustainable
environment and a safe, clean, affordable energy supply.

© Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company

###
 The greening of Planet Earth and other stories

Friday, September 07, 2001
By Kathleen Wong, California Academy of Sciences

This article originally appeared on the California Wild Web site, which is
published by the California Academy of Sciences
The Greening of Planet Earth

More carbon dioxide in the atmosphere seems to be turning the planet into a
literal greenhouse. Satellites have spotted that vegetation in Earth's
Northern Hemisphere is now denser than it was 20 years ago, with plants
growing like, well, weeds.

The effect was strongest in Eurasia, in forests ranging from central Europe
through largely undeveloped far-east Russia. The growing season in Eurasia is
now nearly 18 days longer than in 1981 because spring has been arriving a
week early, and fall has been delayed by about 10 days. In North America,
where forest fragments in the East and the grasslands of the upper Midwest
have seen the most change in growth patterns, the growing season has now
lengthened by about 12 days.

The scientists, from the NASA and Boston University, will publish their work
in the Journal of Geophysical Research — Atmospheres.

Light Reaction Rains Mercury on the Arctic

It was a chemical whodunit worthy of Agatha Christie. Each spring since 1998,
scientists have noticed a surge in toxic mercury levels in the chill Arctic
air. The harmful element has been accumulating in the fragile northern food
chain, with carnivores such as people, fish, and large mammals carrying
unusually high levels.

Now Julia Lu and colleagues at the Meteorological Service of Canada and
Toronto have followed the plot twists and fingered the guilty. The trail
starts in the tailpipes and smokestacks of autos and power plants that burn
fossil fuels, which release about 4,000 tons of mercury vapor into the air
every year.

In the Arctic, the sudden burst of summer sunlight reacts with chemicals in
sea salt to transform the mercury vapor into biologically harmful mercury
oxide. The reaction occurs just as the region's animals and plants are
growing rapidly to make the most of the fleeting two-month Arctic summer. The
same process has been observed in the Antarctic. Together the two poles add
an estimated 150 tons of poisonous mercury to the global food chain every
year.

Copyright 2001, California Academy of Sciences
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