BETA
This is a BETA experience. You may opt-out by clicking here

More From Forbes

Edit Story

Seattle's Silly War On Oil Rigs: Reminder, The City Is Also Home To Boeing, The World's Largest Jet Maker

Following
This article is more than 9 years old.

If a plane flies over Seattle, does anyone hear it? Probably not, because they’re all down at the docks protesting the parking of drilling rigs used in the Arctic. When the port of Seattle agreed to allow Shell to park drill ships on the city’s waterfront, a “kind of civic call to arms” erupted, according to the New York Times.

A unanimous City Council lined up alongside the mayor to question the legality of the agreement with the Port of Seattle, a court challenge was filed by environmental groups, and protesters, in bluster or bluff, vowed to block the rigs’ arrival — though the exact timetable is secret, for security reasons — with a flotilla of kayaks in Elliott Bay.

One resident referred to the lease as “a crime against the planet.” Understanding the nature of the “crime” means winding through some serpentine legal logic. According to the Times:

At the center of the dispute lies a tangle of questions about the politics of climate change. Since Shell will not be drilling or exploring for oil anywhere near Seattle, but merely parking for the night, so to speak, can or should the company be denied a berth because of what might or might not happen thousands of miles away off the north coast of Alaska, or what could take place years in the future if burning fossil fuels — maybe produced by Shell, maybe not — raises sea levels or causes other havoc? Lawyers for the port, in court filings, have said opponents are waging an “intense” political campaign that will falter on the rocks of a narrow contractual dispute.

Opponents of the contract, though, said that protecting Seattle’s environment, in the broadest sense, means taking on the fight everywhere. Whether there may be harm from greenhouse gases, or possible environmental damage from an oil spill or other accident in Alaska, to which Seattle is deeply connected in its economy and history, what Shell does in the Arctic, they say, will not stay there.

Which is why I ask about the planes. Because Seattle is also home to Boeing , the world’s largest commercial jet manufacturer. While the Shell rig may represent a potential danger to the planet, Shell is still struggling with the technical challenges of drilling in the Arctic. It has yet to produce a single drop of oil from the region. 

Meanwhile, thousands of Boeing planes zip through the skies worldwide daily, belching forth carbon that is far more damaging to the planet than anything Shell is likely to tap in the Arctic — should it ever succeed there. A flight from New York to San Francisco, for example, creates an effect equal to 2 or 3 tons of carbon dioxide per person on the flight. 

Air travel is expected to rise globally, making it one of the most serious growing threats to efforts to curb carbon output. That’s part of the reason Europe has adopted an aggressive program to control aviation emissions. 

In other words, the city council members lined up in opposition to Shell using the waterfront as a parking lot are engaging in the politics of convenience. Rather than joining in hands in protest against one of the city’s biggest employers and taxpayers, whose products produce far more greenhouse gases than anything being done in the Arctic, they’ve opted to stage a little theater. It helps that the target is a foreign oil company who plans to drill thousands of miles away. If the Shell protesters are so sincere in their concerns for the planet, where are the pickets of Boeing assembly plants? Why has no one taken legal action on behalf of the planet?

The answer is more than simple hypocrisy, though that certainly plays a role. The problem is that environmental protests too often are directed at controlling supply rather than demand. Quite simply, the Seattle city council is grateful for the jobs and taxes that Boeing pays — and which indirectly benefit many of the protestors, too. They recognize that protesting the carbon emitted by Boeing’s products will simply cause the company to move its plants elsewhere. People are still going to fly, whether Seattle likes it or not.

The same is true for Arctic drilling. The environmental narrative has long cast oil companies as the easy villain. After all, they make profits from fossil fuels. But just as the opposition to the Keystone Pipeline has done nothing to thwart the development of Canadian oil sands, so will the protest of the rigs' mooring in Seattle fail to stop development in the Arctic. If Shell can’t park its rig in Seattle, it will find some place else.

The demand for oil is too great to be stopped by a fleet of kayaks. Even if they stop the rig from arriving at the port, they aren’t going to stop the planes flying overhead. 

(This post was updated to correct the name of the vessels Shell wants to park in Seattle.)

Follow me on Twitter or LinkedInCheck out my website or some of my other work here