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Of Forced Choice and Hip Hop

August 6, 2008

Posted by Josh Mogerman in Solving Global Warming

Tags:

BlackSheep, climatechange, coal, hiphop, Shell, tarsands

I’ve had that great 90’s hip hop tune “The Choice is Yours” in my head for a week now. It's been lodged there since I read comments from Shell’s chief executive in the The Guardian.

What connects the Dutch oil giant with a washed up, but much-beloved hip hop duo? Forced choice.

Black Sheep's rap:

You can get with this, or you can get with that
I think you'll get with this, for this is where it's at 

Shell’s rap boils down to something similar; with the insane idea that only an embrace of Canadian tar sands oil will protect us from the scourge of coal:

Shell warned environmentalists and ethical investors yesterday that failure to exploit tar sands and other unconventional oil products would worsen climate change because it would lead to the world burning even more carbon-heavy coal.

Jeroen van der Veer, Shell's chief executive, said the world needed every kind of energy source it could find at a time of soaring demand. He said groups that had threatened to organise a ban on alternative fossil fuels should be careful because without unconventionals "the balancing fuel will be coal"

So…Alberta’s goo---responsible for three times the CO2 emissions of traditional oil, toxic lakes, and toppled forests---will save us from the climate changing threat of coal? You can get with coal. Or you can get with crude…

Of course not. That is the false choice, and it underscores the ongoing problem in our national energy debate. Choosing between dirty and dirtier fuels is not a choice. Neither coal nor heavy crude oil from the tar sands are reasonable long-term energy choices. It is an effort to prolong, rather than address, the untenable energy status quo. And it is an insult to American ingenuity, implying we cannot break our energy conundrum without scraping the bottom of the barrel.

We need to insist on real solutions to our very real energy problems. In the short-term, that is in large part about figuring how to use less. Bob Herbert’s column in the New York Times this week lamented how the lack of sexiness to efficiency programs is preventing us from taking the fastest and most impactful steps available to us right now. Perhaps if Paris Hilton took up the efficiency cause that would change, since the media is falling all over themselves to report her energy plan (the Chicago Tribune is already pushing her for the next Energy Secretary post...)

But in the meantime, we need to make sure that we look at all the options; not just those that are focused on burning our way out. The choice is ours.

 

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