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A really good idea from the Oil Drum

Here's a modest proposal from the oil drum. It suggests that, since it is highly likely that oil will remain over $100 a barrel for ever, barring major new production, and since smart betting is on it going very steeply upwards in a few years' time, it makes sense to open the arctic and antarctic for drilling now.

Modern technology is relatively clean and the earth can take it. Any new investment will also take a few years to come on stream.

However, since the US is broke, the suggestion goes on to propose that the drilling takes place under the aegis of some form of energy authority which reinvests profits into finding workable, sustainable alternatives to fossil fuels. This is all the more sensible since a free-for all in the arctic such as is shaping up to take place will cause wars.

I also can't see the US just giving in and implementing the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea to legitimate Canadian or Russian use of the vast arctic oil deposits, but I could see them doing this.

This is a modest proposal that is almost Swiftian in its simplicity, but much more sensible than proposing the consumption of children for the sake of a form of society, as Swift did and others have done recently.

I am intrigued by the proposal. This civilisation needs oil for now. Planning to get off it quickly is a dangerous and destructive fantasy. It should be opposed by sensible management away from oil or an energy collapse will be forced on us by events.

I want the ludicrous Middle eastern tyrannies loose of their importance too. And I want to see all the greens hyperventilating as though they really did have their fake asthma the way they do when you chew a cigar near them. Let's contemplate this idea seriously.

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