Oily to Rise
Spring's nearly here, and the thoughts of young research nerds return once again...to energy prices.
In case you hadn't noticed, crude oil prices are spiking once again. Last fall, they squeaked above US $56 per barrel--nominally, the highest price ever--before settling down to just over US $41 after Christmas.
Earlier today, crude prices hit $54.60, very close to their all time record:
(Note: this is the price for "high quality" crude oil delivered to Cushing, OK--which is typically what is meant when people talk about oil prices on the spot market. The heavier oil that comes from Alaska--the source of much of Cascadia's petroleum--is priced a little bit lower, but was still near $50/barrel yesterday; Alaskan oil price trends generally track those of the US overall.)
The reason that prices are so high, and so volatile, is complicated--it's some combination of global supplies failing to keep pace with surging demand, oil traders trying to capitalize on short term price movements, and a premium the market is demanding because the global oil supply is so vulnerable to disruption.
But what it means for the Northwest is simple. Residents of Washington, Oregon, and Idaho consume a combined 28.6 million gallons of petroleum per day. But the states produce none of it. At $50 per barrel the Northwest states lose $34 million every day just to pay for petroleum imports. Over the course of a single year, that's $12.7 billion lost to the region's economy--money that, if it were used for just about anything else, would be far less likely to skip town.
Clarification: Cascadia Scorecard 2005 mentions that the Northwest states lose $30 million dollars a day on oil and gas combined. That's based on average prices for 2004. The $34 million per day figure for petroleum alone, cited in the post above, assumes 12 consecutive months of $50/barrel oil.
Oh, and another thing -- it was a mighty volatile day on the energy markets. Crude futures prices (that is, a contract for delivering crude at the beginning of April) started the day at $53, peaked as high as $55.20 at midday, but fell to $53.55 by the time the market closed. Click on the image to see the ride...
Update: See Oily to Rise II for more on the US economy and energy efficiency.
The Food Less Travelled
Which is greener: buying local, or buying organic?
BBC News today reports on a British study that stakes out a clear position on the issue:
Local food is usually more "green" than organic food, according to a report published in the journal Food Policy.
The authors say organic farming is also valuable, but people can help the environment even more by buying food from within a 20km (12-mile) radius.
They calculate that moving food long distances can cause more harm than non-organic farming methods.
As we've noted before, the "organic" label is clearly not synonymous with "sustainable." To be sure, there are lots of good personal and environmental reasons to choose organic food; for one, people who eat organic ingest less pesticides. (For example, University of Washington researcher Richard Fenske and his colleagues have shown that kids who eat organic have lower levels of pesticides in their urine.)
But the consequences of long-distance transport--including greenhouse gases and toxic releases from vehicle exhaust--can be at least as troublesome as the impacts of chemical-intensive farming.
So if you're looking to minimize the environmental consequences of your food choices, your best bet is to choose food that's both local and organic. But if you have to choose between the two, there's at least one study that says that buying local is the gentler choice.
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The Neverending Story
To Cut Or Not To Cut?
A thoughtful article worth reading in today's Eugene Register-Guard examines an emerging debate among forest conservationists.
Some environmentalists, like the Oregon Natural Resources Council, favor logging on federal land--in the form of thinning--in order to help human-planted even-aged stands return to the ecological complexity of old-growth forests. Others, like the Sierra Club and Native Forest Council, continue to staunchly reject any logging on federal lands, on the grounds that thinning removes valuable nutrients and that logging interests can't be trusted with publicly-owned forests.
