If Rigs Drill Down--

I'm holding out a bit of hope that the recent ecological catastrophe - "oil spill" just doesn't work as a description when you're talking about tens of thousands of barrels of crude spewing out every day for more than a month - in the Gulf of Mexico will thoroughly discredit the idea of offshore drilling. Then I remind myself that I have to be realistic. There is money to be made in slurping up dinosaur stew that happens to be underwater, and as such we've got to get ready quickly for a constant struggle against politicians who place short-term enrichment - particularly, the favors that oil industry lobbyists and representatives give out to grease the wheels - over the long-term interests of those they ostensibly represent.

It's easy enough to see where the battle lines will be drawn next: the Arctic Ocean. At the rate we're going, in the next few years we will lose the northern icecap through the summer months, and all that open ocean with all its inferred oil resources - an estimated 90 billion barrels - is singing a sweet, sweet song in the ears of petroleum executives the world over. Shell Oil was even granted exploration licenses in the Beaufort Sea last year, but thankfully the issue has been tied up in the courts - as far as I know, there are no operating rigs up there yet.

That can't change. In my mind, we can't afford to allow these resources to be exploited. Notwithstanding the environmental impact of burning an additional ninety billion barrels of oil, or the degree to which access to such a bonanza would only encourage the continuation of our current situation, we cannot run the risk of a similarly devastating oil catastrophe in the Arctic Ocean.

Personally, if it was up to me - if I was World Archon, or whatever, because I like "archon" as a title - I would shut the rigs down to as great a degree as possible. We can't afford an oil spill anywhere, whether it's the Gulf of Mexico or the Pacific or the Indian Ocean. Devastation is devastation, no matter whose shores the oil washes up on. The problem here is inertia - existing offshore drilling operations have bit down pretty hard, and they're not going to be coming up easily.

Ultimately, though, this does not come down to the corporations alone. Sure, corporations may be doing all they can to get authorization to drill in the Arctic, but while they have the money they do not have all the power necessary to do it on their own. The final word rests with governments. As far as I am concerned, any government that allows offshore drilling in the Arctic Ocean - taking into account the recent disaster, as well as the need to radically transform the way our civilization is fueled if we're to make it through the twenty-first century in hale and hearty shape - would demonstrate that it is more concerned with the prospect of immediate enrichment than with the long-term interests of its people and of the world as a whole. And as such, in my mind, any government acting in such a manner would lose the moral authority to govern.

We give power to governments so that they can coordinate the things individuals can't, so that they can help ensure we live in peace and plenty. What we needs is a firmer awareness of the concept of the Mandate of Heaven. A short-sighted leap toward the paradigm of the twentieth century is something we can afford only slightly more than another ecological catastrophe.

Keeping Iqaluit's Lights On

There are probably a few people in Nunavut who would rather it hadn't happened. Prime Minister Harper's recent tour of the Canadian Arctic, an overdue demonstration of governmental interest in the country's vast northern hinterland, was jolted on Wednesday morning by a widespread power outage in Iqaluit, the territorial capital. Until Wednesday, it's a fair bet that most southern Canadians probably didn't know if Iqaluit even had electricity.

The problem is that, until recent Russian and Danish noises and activities around the North Pole and Greenland alerted Ottawa to the fact that sovereignty can't be propped up with words alone, the federal government didn't really care about the north. The territory of Nunavut is slightly more than thirty thousand people spread across more than two million square kilometers of ground, and there are few people in the government who speak for them. Iqaluit's electrical generation capacity is, according to the Globe and Mail, a fifty-year-old plant housing four diesel generators. A recent Qulliq Power job posting for a Journeyman Diesel Mechanic in Iqaluit suggests that they're rather small, with generating capacities between one and six megawatts.

It's understandable why Iqaluit's electrical generation infrastructure is based on diesel generators - it's easy to use them, and that would especially have been the case fifty years ago. The twenty-first century poses new challenges, however, and if we're to credibly build up the Arctic to a new standard, finding reliable and effective sources of electricity for its cities will be key above all.

The thing with diesel generators is that they tend to drink their fuel fairly fast when you're powering a city with them. I wasn't able to find an exact breakdown of how many megawatts Iqaluit's generators can put out, individually or in tandem, so I'm fudging it a bit. My numbers are coming from the approximate diesel fuel consumption chart at Diesel Service and Supply Inc., and though my suppositions may be way off, I'd like to think they're at least in the ballpark.

So, for the purposes of argument, let's assume that Iqaluit's four diesel generators are each capable of generating two megawatts of power, and that they're always operating at half load. At this rate, each generator consumes 273.3 liters of fuel per hour. Running twenty-four hours, as they very well might during winter months when the night lasts for twenty hours, they would burn 26,236.6 liters per day, and 183,647 liters per week.

Iqaluit is an expensive place to live in because so much has to be imported. Expensive enough, I say, without having to ship up tens of thousands of liters of diesel fuel every week just to make sure the lights stay on. If Ottawa is looking to build a new Arctic for the twenty-first century, I think they should look at twenty-first century solutions like nuclear battery power.

From the first time I heard of it, I was fascinated by the concept of the Toshiba 4S, effectively a miniaturized nuclear reactor optimized for situations just like Iqaluit's, needing only limited staffing, capable of generating 10 megawatts of power, and theoretically capable of going thirty years between fuelings. Toshiba is already working to use it at the proposed Galena Nuclear Power Plant in Galena, Alaska, a central Alaskan community far removed from the state's grid.

Providing for Iqaluit's energy needs with such a reactor would, I think, be a significant and appropriate investment in the future of Canada's Arctic. It would clean the local air and provide constant, reliable, emission-free electricity. I know that the current government has little interest in environmental issues, given its actions, but this sort of initiative could strike a blow for the environment while simultaneously investing in Nunavut's future.