An airplane makes a low pass over the freshly scarred land of the Roan Plateau in Western Colorado. It picks up speed in a low-angled dive and I picture the rapid-fire clicks as those on board aim and shoot. The aircraft climbs and banks hard, setting up for another pass at the target.
They’ve been shooting for about an hour. Their mission: stop the rampant drilling for natural gas that is quickly gaining a foothold in this once pristine region. These eco-warriors are shooting film of the carnage, gathering ammunition for their fight. The bombs won’t be dropped until later, after the shocking pictures are developed and distributed.
This battle to save the planet will come down to convincing the faithless masses, who have to see to believe. We worried little about the oil wells in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge until we saw pictures of roads scratched through the delicate tundra. Nobody is yet concerned about the destruction caused by crude production in the Middle East because the evidence is so far away, ironically contradicting the close proximity we emphasize in discussing global warming.
The story is laced with ironies. In this example, the defenders burn copious amounts of aviation fuel waging their environmental battle. They have altered a capitalist axiom to fit their own needs: Just as you must spend money to make money, they know that you must burn more fossil fuels in an attempt to halt the drilling for it.
We are an oil-dependent world. We must continue to ruin more land in order to ruin more atmosphere in order to further our causes. It’s a staple of human nature, rationalizing our own purposes while scrutinizing the plans of others.
That may be why the demand for oil seems to simply be without degrees. It is constant. It explains why the price for gasoline goes up by pennies when demand increases over a long holiday weekend compared to dimes when the supply of it is disrupted by nature (human or Mother).
This flurry of extraction activity in our state is not news to the people who have recently driven the section of Interstate 70 from Rifle to Dubuque. The proliferation of drilling has become obvious. There are new rigs up every week. It’s stunning – the newness of it all, heavy equipment on the mountainsides, the rawness of freshly turned soils. These incongruities assure you that it must be stopped.
Yet, despite the natural indignation spawned by this dirty business, few of the concerned motorists passing through here at 80 mph question their own purposes in burning gallons of gasoline. Many have read about the current energy extraction boom here, but most of the convincing data they have gathered for themselves is now coming as a visual byproduct of missions justified in traveling west to Grand Junction for shopping, east to Glenwood Springs to kick tires on new, fuel-efficient automobiles, or off to Canyonlands in Utah for a quick commune with scenery.
It’s no surprise, then, that not even most of the concerns associated with the current energy boom in Colorado are related to effects on the environment or the impending depletion of global oil stores. We see those problems only conceptually. Of most concern is the possibility of a real estate crash, like the one in 1984 after the last boom was finished reverberating.
Yes, the ironies associated with the current oil and gas bonanza on the Uinta-Piceance Basin are seemingly abundant. Amid the current frenzy over global warming and the inevitable descent from the peak in global oilfield production, we continue to burn fuel at an imperturbably steady pace.
But are there truly any ironies here? What exactly are our expectations? Few can verbalize what they are on global, national or even local levels. We let what policy we have roll passively down from the boardrooms of oil and gas companies, whose interests outside of the marketplace are often at odds with our own. In a matter that will increasingly have a larger impact on our lives, other than the price of gasoline, we appear to place low priority on addressing it.
And there it is: That’s the real irony.
Roger Marolt (roger@maroltllp.com) is a lifelong Aspen resident.
