So, the news this morning was the now-usual drumbeat of rising gas prices and calls to begin exploratory oil drilling in Alaska and protected coastal areas, and I was thinking of my dad’s irrational certainty that the high prices aren’t merely the result of supply and demand, that someone<\/i> has just got<\/i> to be behind the abrupt and seemingly unstoppable increases, and suddenly I had an epiphany. My idea was paranoid and sounded like a tinfoil-hat conspiracy theory cooked up by the lunatic fringe, but maybe, just maybe… well, consider this:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The very notion of protected wilderness areas has rankled oil companies and political conservatives for years. Even more frustrating (for them) has been their inability to sway public opinion sufficiently for them to overturn the protections once and for all. Oh, sure, the average citizen may not have strongly<\/i> supported the environmental cause, but I think most folks have generally thought it was a pretty good idea to leave some parts of the country alone. But that’s because protecting wilderness hasn’t required any kind of sacrifice on the part of average Americans. I’ve always had the cynical, sneaking suspicion that the environmental movement would start to lose the battle as soon as environmentalism became too inconvenient for the regular folks in the ‘burbs.<\/p>\n
So here’s my conspiracy theory: maybe my dad’s right and there is something more to those high gas prices. Maybe it’s all a scheme on the part of some cabal to break down the walls keeping the oil barons out of the wilderness zones. Let’s imagine “they” really have done something to raise gas prices beyond what ordinary market forces can explain. Soccer moms are feeling the pinch and getting desperate. The politicians respond by proposing the same thing they’ve been pitching for years: opening the Alaskan wilderness to drilling. Only now the public is more receptive to the idea because it’s costing so damn much to drive little Emily to her piano recital. And quick as you please, there are derricks pumping away in ANWR.<\/p>\n
Crazy? Maybe. I don’t really believe it myself. But you’ve got to admit that it’d be an ingenious endgame, don’t you think? If there’s any truth behind this notion, and if it ends up being successful, the really sad thing is how little pushing it will have taken to break the well-intentioned but ultimately self-interested American voters…<\/p>\n
[For the record, I am NOT any kind of major tree-hugger myself. Hell, I drive a Mustang<\/i>, okay? I also don’t have any particular attachment to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, even though I do think there is value in untouched natural landscapes and that non-human life ought to have as much right to go about its business unmolested as we do. But I’m enough of a realist to acknowledge that many environmentalist goals are completely idealistic — no, worse, unrealistic<\/i> — and unlikely ever to happen, or to be maintained indefinitely. Like the idea that no one will ever set foot in a certain region simply because it’s marked “off limits” on the map. I just think it’d be a damn shame if circumstances forced us into disturbing the place for a quick and easy fix instead of taking a longer, more painful, but ultimately better<\/i> path — i.e., getting serious about kicking the oil habit — and it’d be an even bigger shame if those circumstances have come about because of a dirty back-room deal between guys who smoke more in Cuban cigars a month than I make in a year. I hate that so much of what goes on this country seems to be determined by that kind of secretive nonsense, aided and abetted by the forces of marketing and media. Just so you know where I’m coming from here…]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
So, the news this morning was the now-usual drumbeat of rising gas prices and calls to begin exploratory oil drilling in Alaska and protected coastal areas, and I was thinking of my dad’s irrational certainty that the high prices aren’t merely the result of supply and demand, that someone has just got to be behind […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1451"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1451\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}