{"id":3644,"date":"2013-08-24T08:00:06","date_gmt":"2013-08-24T13:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=3644"},"modified":"2013-08-18T18:59:04","modified_gmt":"2013-08-18T23:59:04","slug":"sorry-ecuador-drill-baby-drill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=3644","title":{"rendered":"Sorry, Ecuador; Drill, Baby, Drill"},"content":{"rendered":"

I heard a story on the Voice of Russia radio news the other day about Ecuador’s plans to go ahead with drilling for oil in an environmentally rich and sensitive Amazon rainforest region, after failing to raise $3.6 billion in donations to “buy out” the economic value that the oil would have to its economy. The Washington Post article<\/a> pretty much summed up the situation: “Ecuador asked the world to pay it not to drill for oil, and the world said no”. President Rafael Correa came up with this plan back in 2010. He managed to raise a total of $13 million; so it was 0.1 billion down, 3.5 to go. Now he decided to throw in the towel and drill, baby, drill. Of course, while requesting the funds, there were all sorts of dire consequences in the air; now he says that less than 1% of the Yasuni National Park will be affected. <\/p>\n

Hmmm. This is something of a tough question. On the one hand . . . we can’t all ask each other to pay to not drill for oil. At some point, oil production would plummet and prices would shoot up, then the world economy would crash and nobody could make any further such payments. If Ecuador got away with this, then why not Mexico, Canada, Russia, Niger, maybe even North Dakota? On the other hand . . . poorer nations have a harder time integrating environmental concerns<\/a> in their oil drilling efforts. (It is arguable that abundant natural-resources keep poorer nations from diversifying their economies, as they become too dependent on oil and mineral wealth — the “resource curse”<\/a>). In all fairness, if environmentally sensitive areas are to be “saved”, or at least have damage minimized from hydrocarbon exploitation, then people in the better-off nations like the USA, Japan and Western Europe should contribute the most for this. <\/p>\n

But other than asking for voluntary donations from governments or private individuals, there’s really no good way to make this happen. The world, such as it is, is just not ready for one-world government. It’s hard enough to make government work on local and state levels; and national politics in the past 10 years continue to make people doubt that government on the national level is useful. So why would we believe that a government of humankind-in-general could make things better?<\/p>\n

So, sorry Ecuador, but the world is taking a pass on saving Yasuni (or that 1% of Yasuni that will be impacted). President Correa can now pin the blame on what he is about to do on the evil ones in el norte, i.e the United States (a good populist strategy since a majority of Ecuadorians allegedly oppose drilling<\/a> in Yasumi). And the evil USA and other industrial nations will get more Ecuadorian oil to keep prices in check. So everyone will come out happy. Still, this is a good reminder that our modern lifestyles do make a heavy footprint on the natural world, a footprint that can’t continue all that much longer without imposing nastier and nastier consequences. I suspect that President Correa’s proposal was always aimed more at internal Ecuadorian politics than actually saving a pristine rainforest. But it might have a good side-effect if it does make thoughtful people here in economic paradise wonder, just how much longer can this party go on? And what can we do to avoid a hard landing in the future?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I heard a story on the Voice of Russia radio news the other day about Ecuador’s plans to go ahead with drilling for oil in an environmentally rich and sensitive Amazon rainforest region, after failing to raise $3.6 billion in donations to “buy out” the economic value that the oil would have to its economy. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,13,24],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3644"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3644"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3644\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3647,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3644\/revisions\/3647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}