Bear Necessities

Published on Wednesday, 09 February 2011 15:55

By Robin Whitlock

Could the recent establishment of a protected area for polar bears in Alaska add to existing concerns about oil depletion?

President Obama recently announced the creation of a protected area for polar bears consisting of 187,000 square miles of Alaskan wilderness which has now been designated as ‘critical habitat’. The Assistant Secretary for Fish, Wildlife and Parks at the Department of the Interior, Tom Strickland, commented that this action would help to stave off the polar bears extinction as a result of melting ice from climate change.

There have, however, been various voices of dissent raised against this plan, particularly by the Alaska Slope Regional Organisation, a corporation that acts in the business interests of Alaska’s indigenous people, the Alaskan governor, Sean Parnell and a number of oil and gas industry representatives. One of these, Kate Moriarty, deputy director of the Alaska Oil and Gas Association, complained that the announcement would “create more delays and added costs to projects in what is already a high-cost environment” [1].

Echoing the Deepwater Horizon disaster, this appears to be another issue which threatens to generate direct confrontation between high value natural features and the energy industry. It is not merely a question of profits for oil and gas companies so much as another possible step forward towards an early and perceivably drastic energy crunch as access to possible remaining oil and gas reserves are restricted.

In recent years for example, the amount of onshore oil thought to be available for exploitation in the Alaskan National Petroleum Reserve has been cut by 90 per cent according to the United States Geological Survey. Furthermore, the regulatory obstacles that have dogged Royal Dutch Shell’s attempts to drill its leases in Alaska increased when President Obama suspended offshore drilling following the Deepwater Horizon disaster, despite the company’s assurances that it could drill safely without risking a similar calamity [2].

Such assurances will ring hollow to those environmentalists and oil industry experts who accept the findings of the new report from the Pew Environment Group. The report claims that neither the US government nor the oil industry have the necessary resources to deal with a major blowout or oil spill in the Arctic seas [3].

Essentially we face two choices. As the amount of recoverable oil depletes, we can scramble to extract the very last accessible reserves of the stuff in order to prolong the inevitable and to keep our society on an even keel. Alternatively, we can recognise the writing on the wall and either put in place plans for a ‘managed collapse’ or begin emergency discussions towards the achievement of a global co-operative ‘renewable energy’ programme.

What makes this issue especially important is the fact that recently the International Energy Agency (IEA) announced that the world’s oil supplies had in fact peaked in 2006 and will never recover; the bulk of the oil we will need to compensate for those oilfields that are currently depleting will have to come from currently undiscovered fields [4].

It is now perfectly clear that the first choice leads to a dead end. Oil will deplete soon if it indeed it isn’t already, and if we continue to pursue this path instead of developing a sensible renewable policy, then we risk losing our entire society as the structure upon which it rests comes crashing down.

However, we also lose something more - many of the species with which we share our planet, of which the polar bear is perhaps one of the most loved. Indeed, polar bears are already listed as a threatened species under the US Endangered Species Act as the warming waters of the Arctic circle has increasingly denied to them the ice that they depend on for their very survival. There are two main populations of polar bear in the area awarded designation. Around 1,586 animals roam the Beaufort Sea area of Alaska and Canada and according to Rosa Meehan of the Marine Mammals Management Programme this group is already declining as fewer young bears and cubs are surviving the effects of melting ice. Another population migrates between the Alaskan coast and Russia and can often be found in the Chukchi Sea. It is estimated to number between 2,000 and 3,000 animals and is thought to be the healthier of the two groups [5].

The State of Alaska is currently considering mounting a legal challenge to the President’s plans. Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska, was vociferously opposed to registering the polar bear as endangered during her term of office which ended in 2009n [6]. However there’s no real surprise there as this is a woman who delighted in slaughtering caribou on her reality TV show Sarah Palin’s Alaska and who in 2007 offered a $150 bounty for wolves on the basis that they prey on caribou and moose thereby making main competition to Alaskan hunters [6].

The main objectors to the designation claim that it will not help to save the polar bear since the real issue is climate change and the melting of the polar sea ice, something that the award of critical habitat status will not be able to prevent. Yet, this is mild criticism compared to some of the Alaskan political uttering’s in recent years, with Representative Don Young condemning “extreme environmental organisations” and Alaskan officials rejecting climate models that warn of a complete meltdown of the summer polar ice cap by 2030 or even sooner [7].

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Brendan Cummings, Senior Counsel for the Centre for Biological Diversity clearly disagrees: “The critical habitat designation clearly identifies the areas that need to be protected if the polar bear is to survive in a rapidly melting arctic” he told The Alaska Dispatch.

Royal Dutch Shell has latterly decided to respect the protected area, a decision that environmentalists have celebrated as a victory for polar bears. The oil giant has given way to the Environmental Protection Agency’s order for a renewed study of the likely impacts of drilling in the area and has instead aimed for a drilling date in 2012. Meanwhile the environmental group The Sierra Club called the delay a ‘victory for worker safety and the environment’.

“The Arctic should not be an option for corporate polluters who are already reaping massive profits” stated the group’s director of land protection, Nathan Manuel. “The cold truth is that there is no way to clear up an Arctic spill” he said [8].

“Don’t spend your time lookin’ around, for something you want that can’t be found” sang Baloo the Bear in The Jungle Book.

A wise old bear indeed!

Relevant Links and Videos

Drilling in the US Ocean

Shell Presses for Drilling in the ArcticPolar Bears in Alaska at Risk (Video)

End of Peak Oil Growth

Robin's Environment Blog