by Bill McKibben, reposted from TomDispatch

If we could see the world with a particularly illuminating set of spectacles, one of its most prominent features at the moment would be a giant carbon bubble, whose bursting someday will make the housing bubble of 2007 look like a lark. As yet — as we shall see — it’s unfortunately largely invisible to us.

In compensation, though, we have some truly beautiful images made possible by new technology.  Last month, for instance, NASA updated the most iconic photograph in our civilization’s gallery: “Blue Marble,” originally taken from Apollo 17 in 1972. The spectacular new high-def image shows a picture of the Americas on January 4th, a good day for snapping photos because there weren’t many clouds.

It was also a good day because of the striking way it could demonstrate to us just how much the planet has changed in 40 years. As Jeff Masters, the web’s most widely read meteorologist, explains, “The U.S. and Canada are virtually snow-free and cloud-free, which is extremely rare for a January day. The lack of snow in the mountains of the Western U.S. is particularly unusual. I doubt one could find a January day this cloud-free with so little snow on the ground throughout the entire satellite record, going back to the early 1960s.”

In fact, it’s likely that the week that photo was taken will prove “the driest first week in recorded U.S. history.” Indeed, it followed on 2011, which showed the greatest weather extremes in our history — 56% of the country was either in drought or flood, which was no surprise since “climate change science predicts wet areas will tend to get wetter and dry areas will tend to get drier.” Indeed, the nation suffered 14 weather disasters each causing $1 billion or more in damage last year. (The old record was nine.) Masters again: “Watching the weather over the past two years has been like watching a famous baseball hitter on steroids.”

In the face of such data — statistics that you can duplicate for almost every region of the planet — you’d think we’d already be in an all-out effort to do something about climate change. Instead, we’re witnessing an all-out effort to… deny there’s a problem.

Our GOP presidential candidates are working hard to make sure no one thinks they’d appease chemistry and physics. At the last Republican debate in Florida, Rick Santorum insisted that he should be the nominee because he’d caught on earlier than Newt or Mitt to the global warming “hoax.”

Most of the media pays remarkably little attention to what’s happening. Coverage of global warming has dipped 40% over the last two years. When, say, there’s a rare outbreak of January tornadoes, TV anchors politely discuss “extreme weather,” but climate change is the disaster that dare not speak its name.

And when they do break their silence, some of our elite organs are happy to indulge in outright denial. Last month, for instance, the Wall Street Journal published an op-ed by “16 scientists and engineers” headlined “No Need to Panic About Global Warming.” The article was easily debunked. It was nothing but a mash-up of long-since-disproved arguments by people who turned out mostly not to be climate scientists at all, quoting other scientists who immediately said their actual work showed just the opposite.

It’s no secret where this denialism comes from: the fossil fuel industry pays for it. (Of the 16 authors of the Journal article, for instance, five had had ties to Exxon.) Writers from Ross Gelbspan to Naomi Oreskes have made this case with such overwhelming power that no one even really tries denying it any more. The open question is why the industry persists in denial in the face of an endless body of fact showing climate change is the greatest danger we’ve ever faced.

Why doesn’t it fold the way the tobacco industry eventually did? Why doesn’t it invest its riches in things like solar panels and so profit handsomely from the next generation of energy? As it happens, the answer is more interesting than you might think.

Part of it’s simple enough: the giant energy companies are making so much money right now that they can’t stop gorging themselves. ExxonMobil, year after year, pulls in more money than any company in history. Chevron’s not far behind. Everyone in the business is swimming in money.

Still, they could theoretically invest all that cash in new clean technology or research and development for the same. As it happens, though, they’ve got a deeper problem, one that’s become clear only in the last few years. Put briefly: their value is largely based on fossil-fuel reserves that won’t be burned if we ever take global warming seriously.

When I talked about a carbon bubble at the beginning of this essay, this is what I meant. Here are some of the relevant numbers, courtesy of the Capital Institute: we’re already seeing widespread climate disruption, but if we want to avoid utter, civilization-shaking disaster, many scientists have pointed to a two-degree rise in global temperatures as the most we could possibly deal with.

If we spew 565 gigatons more carbon into the atmosphere, we’ll quite possibly go right past that reddest of red lines. But the oil companies, private and state-owned, have current reserves on the books equivalent to 2,795 gigatons — five times more than we can ever safely burn. It has to stay in the ground.

Put another way, in ecological terms it would be extremely prudent to write off $20 trillion worth of those reserves. In economic terms, of course, it would be a disaster, first and foremost for shareholders and executives of companies like ExxonMobil (and people in places like Venezuela).

If you run an oil company, this sort of write-off is the disastrous future staring you in the face as soon as climate change is taken as seriously as it should be, and that’s far scarier than drought and flood. It’s why you’ll do anything — including fund an endless campaigns of lies — to avoid coming to terms with its reality. So instead, we simply charge ahead.  To take just one example, last month the boss of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Thomas Donohue, called for burning all the country’s newly discovered coal, gas, and oil — believed to be 1,800 gigatons worth of carbon from our nation alone.

What he and the rest of the energy-industrial elite are denying, in other words, is that the business models at the center of our economy are in the deepest possible conflict with physics and chemistry. The carbon bubble that looms over our world needs to be deflated soon. As with our fiscal crisis, failure to do so will cause enormous pain — pain, in fact, almost beyond imagining. After all, if you think banks are too big to fail, consider the climate as a whole and imagine the nature of the bailout that would face us when that bubble finally bursts.

Unfortunately, it won’t burst by itself — not in time, anyway. The fossil-fuel companies, with their heavily funded denialism and their record campaign contributions, have been able to keep at bay even the tamest efforts at reining in carbon emissions. With each passing day, they’re leveraging us deeper into an unpayable carbon debt — and with each passing day, they’re raking in unimaginable returns. ExxonMobil last week reported its 2011 profits at $41 billion, the second highest of all time. Do you wonder who owns the record? That would be ExxonMobil in 2008 at $45 billion.

Telling the truth about climate change would require pulling away the biggest punchbowl in history, right when the party is in full swing. That’s why the fight is so pitched. That’s why those of us battling for the future need to raise our game. And it’s why that view from the satellites, however beautiful from a distance, is likely to become ever harder to recognize as our home planet.

This piece was originally published at TomDispatch.

Bill McKibben is Schumann Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury College, founder of the global climate campaign 350.org, a TomDispatch regular, and the author, most recently, of Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet.

I’ve come to jokingly use this term for anything really huge.  (We are, after all, the Saudi Arabia of climate denial.) So in true American spirit, I am dubbing yesterday’s speech by Saudi Arabia’s Oil Minister Ali Al-Naimi the Saudi Arabia of bold statements.

In a speech at the Middle East and North Africa energy conference in London yesterday, Al-Naimi — who once called renewable energy a “nightmare” — hailed energy efficiency and solar as important investments, global warming “real” and “pressing,” and explained that drilling for oil “does not create many jobs.”

“We know that pumping oil out of the ground does not create many jobs. It does not foster an entrepreneurial spirit, nor does it sharpen critical faculties.”

In the U.S., which is definitely not the Saudi Arabia of oil (that would be Saudi Arabia), there is a major industry campaign underway to convince Americans that drilling for fossil fuels will create over a million jobs in the country. However, assuming we drill virtually everywhere possible in America, credible analysis puts the real figure at a small fraction of that claim.

Even the Saudis, who pump out 12% of the world’s oil, understand that simply drilling for more oil isn’t a long-term economic strategy.

A business-as-usual path also puts us deeper into environmental debt, a point that the Saudi oil minister seems to understand as well. While Al-Naimi said he believes that oil production “will continue to play a major role in the overall energy mix for many decades,” he also made some very explicit statements about carbon emissions:

“Greenhouse gas emissions and global warming are among humanity’s most pressing concerns. Societal expectations on climate change are real, and our industry is expected to take a leadership role.”

It’s still not really clear what that “leadership role” is — except to pump out more oil and gas. Although, Al-Naimi did give a plug to efficiency and renewables as increasingly important part of the country’s energy strategy:

“The efficient use of energy is as much an issue for Saudi Arabia, with its huge natural resources, as it is for all countries. Increased efficiency makes sense environmentally, but also economically.”

“We are striving, also, to raise awareness among the public, and specifically addressing children and schools about the tangible benefits of energy efficiency. And we are investing manpower, and brainpower, in efforts to develop new thinking when it comes to energy efficiency.”

“I see renewable energy sources as supplementing existing sources, helping to prolong our continued export of crude oil. And this is why we are investing in solar energy, which we also have in abundance. The Kingdom experiences roughly 3,000 hours of sunshine per year, emitting about 7,000 watts of energy per square metre. Saudi Arabia also features empty stretches of desert that can host solar arrays and it is blessed with deposits of quartz that can be used in the manufacture of silicon photovoltaic cells.”

Saudi Arabia is considering a renewable energy law that would help promote a modest increase in solar photovoltaics, solar thermal, biogas and waste-heat-to-energy. However, if the strategy is seen only as a way to “prolong continued export of crude,” it doesn’t really match Al-Naimi’s statement that carbon-based resources are “among humanity’s most pressing concerns.”

Indeed, the gap between rhetoric and the pace of change in global energy production is one big Saudi Arabia of contradictions.

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The U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker Healy approaches the Russian-flagged tanker vessel Renda Tuesday evening.

By Kiley Kroh

Today the Russian tanker Renda, escorted by the United States’ only operating icebreaking vessel, will attempt to make its final push in delivering much-needed fuel to the remote, icebound community of Nome, Alaska.  The ships’ progress has been impeded by high winds, strong currents, brutal cold, and thick sea ice. They moved just 50 feet on Tuesday and slowed even further on Wednesday.  With a 25-foot ice ridge still blocking access to the harbor, the tanker will be forced to attempt offloading its cargo through a mile-long hose to shore.

The tanker Renda and ice-breaker Healy arrive in the area of the ice-choked Nome harbor today.  Photo KNOM.

Ordinarily, the last delivery is made prior to the ice closing in, but this year it was delayed by a “monster storm” that hit Alaska in early November covering an area twice the size of Texas.  The tempest produced hurricane-force winds, blizzard conditions, coastal flooding, and spurred evacuations of many coastal communities.  The 3,500 residents of Nome, a city located on the western coast of Alaska, rely on tanker barges to deliver home heating oil, gasoline, and diesel for the winter months. The village has enough fuel to last until March, but ice in the Bering Sea won’t clear until midsummer.  In a bid to avoid the $9 per gallon gasoline that would likely result from flying fuel into the isolated city, the Nome-based Sitnasuak Native Corporation signed a contract to have a double-hulled Ice Classed Russian tanker deliver the 1.3 million gallons of fuel.

The unprecedented effort has captured worldwide attention and also brought serious concerns to light about the nation’s insufficient resources and infrastructure in the Arctic.  With the President of Royal Dutch Shell expressing confidence yesterday that his company will begin drilling in the fragile Arctic waters off Alaska’s northern coast this summer, addressing these concerns becomes even more urgent.

The Coast Guard is responsible for search and rescue, spill response and the national defense missions in the Arctic.  Their capacity in the region is limited and includes woefully inadequate icebreaking capacity.

The Coast Guard’s only working icebreaker is the 12 year-old Healy, which is mainly deployed on scientific missions and can only break through thinner ice. It has two other heavy-duty polar icebreakers, but both are out of commission at the moment. By comparison, Russia currently operates 20 icebreakers, including seven powerful nuclear-powered vessels, and China is in the process of building its second icebreaker.

As the Arctic melts at an alarming rate, the infrastructure in the U.S. Arctic is incapable of supporting the imminent increase in activity that will come from greater access to marine resources. Alaska has no deepwater offshore port or on-shore harbor along its western or North Slope shores.  As a recent E&E report explains, the Army Corps of Engineers has undertaken a three-year, $3 million study to determine whether or not to build at least one deepwater port in the US Arctic.  However, “once a site is selected, the financing, planning, design and construction could take 20 years to complete. Industry officials privately estimate that the cost of the project could climb to $1 billion.”

The extremely harsh environmental conditions complicate any effort to industrialize the Arctic, and put pristine natural resources in jeopardy.  Testifying before the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries, and Coast Guard in July, Dr. Andrew Metzger of the University of Alaska Fairbanks stated,

“The rigors of the Arctic cannot be overstated.  People and facilities in this environ must contend with extreme cold, permanently frozen soil (permafrost) and lack of daylight in winter. In addition, coastal communities and marine infrastructure must contend with intense wind and wave conditions, subsea permafrost, accelerating erosion and potentially catastrophic hazards from sea ice. These harsh conditions will significantly shape development of marine infrastructure in the Arctic as well as stakeholder activities.”

An upcoming report from the Center for American progress, due to be released later this month, will examine in greater detail America’s deficiencies in regard to Arctic infrastructure and oil spill response preparedness, and suggest steps to be taken before activities, such as drilling, commence in the world’s last unspoiled frontier.

Today the world watches as the Renda and Healy wait until daylight to begin the final stage of their 10-day journey.  If the mission is successful, it will bring temporary relief to the residents of Nome.  But the challenges associated with a permanent U.S. presence in the Arctic will be much more difficult to overcome.

– Kiley Kroh is Associate Director of Ocean Communications at the Center for American Progress.

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Tom Donohue

We have 1.4 trillion barrels of oil, enough to last at least 200 years. We have 2.7 quadrillion cubic feet of natural gas, enough to last 120 years. We have 486 billion tons of coal, enough to last more than 450 years—and we need to use more of this strategic resource cleanly and wisely here at home while selling it around the world.

Burning that amount of fossil fuel would generate 444 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide from the oil, 135 billion tons from the natural gas, and 1.258 trillion tons from the coal. To maintain a climate compatible with civilization all of humanity needs to limit future greenhouse pollution to less than 650 billion tons.

Far from “keeping the American Dream alive for generation after generation,” as Donohue claims, his promotion of catastrophic global warming would grant a diminished, deadly world to future generations.

Read Donohue’s remarks promoting the destruction of civilization:

Let’s start with a big one—energy.

Our nation is on the cusp of an energy boom that is already creating hundreds of thousands of jobs, revitalizing entire communities, and reinvigorating American manufacturing.

Unconventional oil and natural gas development is on pace to create more than 300,000 jobs by 2015 in Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia alone. Take a look at what’s happening in North Dakota. The state is booming. Unemployment is at 3.4%. Oil production just surpassed that of Ecuador—one of the members of OPEC.

Energy is a game changer for the United States. It is, as the saying goes, “the next big thing.” With the right policies, the oil and natural gas industry could create more than 1 million jobs by 2018. Not only can we create jobs, but we can cut our dependence on overseas imports while adding hundreds of billions of dollars to government coffers in the coming years.

Recent discoveries have confirmed that this nation is truly blessed with energy resources. We have 1.4 trillion barrels of oil, enough to last at least 200 years. We have 2.7 quadrillion cubic feet of natural gas, enough to last 120 years. We have 486 billion tons of coal, enough to last more than 450 years–and we need to use more of this strategic resource cleanly and wisely here at home while selling it around the world.

To tap our energy resources, we must speed up permitting and end many of the restrictions that have put key areas off-limits. Instead of handpicking a few technologies, we must harness all our resources, traditional and alternative—while expanding nuclear power and driving greater efficiency.

Our biggest and most reliable foreign energy supplier is Canada. The proposed Keystone XL pipeline would bring Canadian oil sands down to our Gulf Coast refineries and to other destinations along the way.

This project has passed every environmental test. There is no legitimate reason—none at all—to subject it to further delay. Labor unions and the business community alike are urging President Obama to act in the best interests of our national security and our workers and approve the pipeline. We can put 20,000 Americans to work right away and up to 250,000 over the life of the project.

Watch it:

From the beginning of the 112th Congress, it was suspected that Chairman Doc Hastings (R-WA) would lead the committee on an “oil above all” mission, and that proved to be the case — 20 out of 65 oversight hearings were held on how to do more oil and gas drilling, while just four were held on spurring renewable energy development. Hearings weren’t the only way Republicans attempted to prioritize the bottom line of their corporate contributors over the public lands that belong to all Americans — indeed, they went so far as to push extreme measures to mine uranium next to the Grand Canyon and deny the existence of an entire industry of green jobs, both of which are shown in this video.

The House of Representatives in the 112th Congress as a whole has the dubious distinction of being “the most anti-environment House in the history of Congress,” averaging more than one anti-environmental vote for every day the House was in session in 2011. Much of that legislation started in the House Committee on Natural Resources, where CAPAF’s Public Lands Project spent the year highlighting mistruths about oil and gas subsidies, exposing nefarious motivations for mining and drilling our public lands, and standing up for policies that protect the lands that belong to all of us.

Kelly, who was a wealthy car dealer before winning election in 2010, and Liddy spent the majority of the interview trading barbs about the Chevy Volt, a landmark American electric car produced by General Motors.

The Pennsylvania Republican said that the government ought not to help fund innovative renewable energy projects like the Volt because the “science [is] way out in front of the market.” Kelly went on to explain that “this is science that doesn’t make sense,” despite the fact that electric car technology has existed for nearly a century and was first developed by Henry Ford and Thomas Edison. He later declared that House Republicans “want to pull the plug on electric cars”:

KELLY: My problem with the Volt sir, and you and I have had this conversation. This is science that’s way out in front of the market. This is science that doesn’t make sense.

Listen to it:

Kelly’s opposition to subsidies appears to only include clean, renewable energies. In July, Kelly defended federal subsidies for oil and gas companies because “we want companies to be profitable.” The Tea Party Republican holds millions of dollars worth of stocks in Pennsylvania oil and gas companies.

In short, Kelly opposes funding clean energy projects because the science “doesn’t make sense,” but supports funding dirty energy because we want oil and gas companies “to be profitable.”

But like many conservative attacks on the president, the war on American energy is a fiction. In fact, as the Wall Street Journal reports today, U.S. exports of fossil fuels “are soaring” and the U.S. is on pace to be “a net exporter of petroleum products in 2011 for the first time in 62 years”:

According to data released by the U.S. Energy Information Administration on Tuesday, the U.S. sent abroad 753.4 million barrels of everything from gasoline to jet fuel in the first nine months of this year, while it imported 689.4 million barrels.

That the U.S. is shipping out more fuel than it brings in is significant because the nation has for decades been a voracious energy consumer. It took in huge quantities of not only crude oil from the Middle East but also refined fuels from Europe, Latin America and elsewhere to help run its factories and cars. [...]

The reversal raises the prospect of the U.S. becoming a major provider of various types of energy to the rest of the world, a status that was once virtually unthinkable. The U.S. already exports vast amounts of coal, and companies such as Exxon Mobil Corp. are pursuing or exploring plans to liquefy newly abundant natural gas and send it overseas.

This is, of course, good news, even though much of it has to do with the faltering U.S. economy, which has driven down demand for fuel. But the new data also demonstrates the absurdity of conservative energy policy, which starts with the (baseless) assumption that domestic fossil fuel production is too low and follows that it must be incentivized with taxpayer dollars and licenses to pollute and bend labor safety rules in order to increase output.

Meanwhile, U.S. oil production is up, despite Obama’s mythical war against the industry. American drivers have seen little benefit from this, however, because prices are set in a global market, where quickly developing countries are driving up demand and thus prices. So increasing production here would have negligible impact on prices as American refineries would just ship their product abroad where it could fetch higher prices.

by Greg Rucks and Jesse Morris, Rocky Mountain Institute

In Reinventing Fire, Rocky Mountain Institute provides a blueprint for transforming transportation and freight services with uncompromised convenience, safety and performance using no oil by 2050.

But how do we get there? RMI lays out a five-step program for ending our oil addiction.

1. Shift to ultralight but ultrastrong autobodies

The virtues of a lightweight auto body with improved safety and performance are universally applicable to the many auto powertrain options now available or under development.  To cost-effectively electrify autos, automakers have begun to adopt lightweight bodies that enable a smaller powertrain and fewer, cheaper batteries or fuel cells to provide competitive range.

While incremental lightweighting, reductions in aerodynamic drag and tires with lower rolling resistance substantially improve fuel economy, the true potential of “Revolutionary+” autos that achieve 125-240 mpg equivalent is fully unlocked through the use of advanced materials—such as carbon fiber composites — paired with resulting savings in manufacturing.

2. Pursue innovative state or regional policies that boost the economics of Revolutionary+ vehicles

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE OR COMMENT

For most auto buyers, fuel efficiency and fuel costs have historically been minor considerations. The fuel savings from switching to an all-electric auto, though important over years, can seem small on a day-to-day basis.

Such fuel savings are drastic for Revolutionary+ autos because of their extreme efficiency—especially over the entire lifetime of the auto. However, while cost of ownership of Revolutionary+ autos will be lower than for autos built and powered by traditional means, up-front sticker price will initially be higher. Innovative programs such as feebates, fleet procurement, cash for clunkers and affordable financing can offset the initial price premium of Revolutionary+ autos, helping propel automakers down three mutually reinforcing learning curves: advanced ultralight materials, manufacturing savings and electrified powertrains. This enables Revolutionary+ autos to quickly reach parity with the competition.

3. Apply vehicle-fitness based designs across other modes of transportation and encourage the production of 2nd and 3rd generation non-food biofuels

There has always been a place for fire—indeed, the history and development of our species is intimately entwined with it, and the energy density of combustible liquid fuel is as yet unparalleled. However, applying vehicle-fitness-based design principles across transportation modes could drastically reduce liquid fuel demand by 2050.

Heavy trucks that move freight across the country do so with timeliness and at competitively low rates, keeping prices low for the end users of goods. But doubling the efficiency of our freight transportation system by redesigning heavy trucks could save $800 billion in fuel costs between now and 2050. We can adopt suites of efficiency technologies in truck design including auxiliary power units (APUs), low rolling resistance tires and using more long combination vehicles to reduce the number of trucks on the road.

But even after applying vehicle fitness to all modes of transportation, in 2050 we’ll still rely on liquid fuels for transportation modes that cannot be feasibly or cost-effectively electrified, namely airplanes and heavy trucks. That liquid fuel can be forged aboveground in biorefineries using agricultural waste streams and non-cropland perennial plants, all without taking food off the world’s tables.

4. Improve how we use our vehicles

Transforming the design of autos, trucks, planes and other conveyances is only one piece of the puzzle. Changing how we use our vehicles could provide additional value to consumers and expand the range of mobility options.

Existing examples of such improvements to vehicle use and expanded mobility include mobile carpooling applications that allow commuters to offset fuel costs by selling their empty seats; car sharing programs that eliminate the need for car ownership in urban markets; and dynamic pricing mechanisms to decongest peak travel times and extract more value out of existing roads and highways. Some communities are redesigning for people—not cars—by siting offices, schools, retailers and homes in close proximity to one another and with easy access to public transportation systems. If these approaches to enhanced vehicle use reached their maximum potential, U.S. driving could be reduced by half.

We can use other vehicles more productively and efficiently, too. Heavy truck drivers can be incentivized to drive more efficiently. Trucks’ idle fuel consumption can be mitigated by using APUs. Airplanes can cruise slightly slower, glide to direct landings without fuel-hungry maneuvers and use advances in air traffic management to chart the fastest routes and carry less excess fuel. While these strategies to improve transportation efficiency and expanded mobility are succeeding in specific U.S. markets, it will fall to a new generation of entrepreneurs, regulators, city planners and innovators to maximize the true potential of smarter vehicle use.

5. Focus on outcomes, not motives

This new transportation system based on super-efficient vehicles more productively used would produce a net societal savings of $3.8 trillion between now and 2050. But it won’t happen overnight. While regulators and administrators at all levels can help chart the path toward this future state, entrepreneurs, automakers and service providers will lead the way. In an increasingly competitive global marketplace, first- and fast-moving innovators will be the best positioned to capture market share in a lucrative, transformed industry. The shift will be fraught with risk, but the advantage will be enduring.

– Jesse Morris is a transportation analyst and Greg Rucks is a transportation consultant with the Rocky Mountain Institute. Check out the RMI video below outlining many of these points:

On Friday, Rep. Steve Stivers (R-Ohio) put meat on the bones by announcing a plan that would require lease sales in areas off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, among other areas, and lift a congressional ban on oil-and-gas leasing that covers most of the eastern Gulf of Mexico.

The plan includes a lease sale off Virginia’s coast by mid-2012. [...]

Separately, House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) introduced legislation that authorizes oil-and-gas leasing in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Stivers insists that removing drilling bans, or “government roadblocks,” will “provide much-needed revenue to help pay for vital infrastructure improvements.” However, as opening up the ANWR to drilling will do little to fill the need for revenue as the Department of Energy noted it’d take at least 10 years to produce any oil from the Arctic. It will only serve to endanger the home of America’s last polar bears and porcupine caribou.

Of course, the Senate Democrats plan to pay for infrastructure with a small surtax on America’s millionaires would actually yield the needed revenue to pay for these “vital infrastructure improvements.” But, as always, the Republicans are dead set against a revenue plan that doesn’t further their special interests agenda. And, as always, it’s done at the expense of the most vulnerable.

An investigation into enforcement in the nation’s largest oil and gas producing states finds that companies have “little to fear from the inspectors and agencies regulating” the industry.  This comes days after a panel of experts released a report warning that poor regulatory oversight of natural gas fracking could risk “serious environmental consequences and a loss of public confidence.”

The investigation of state-level data, conducted by Greenwire, shows that only a very small fraction of violations are enforced with fines. And when companies are fined, the penalties are “puny.”

In Texas, 96 percent of the 80,000 violations by oil and gas drillers in 2009 resulted in no enforcement action. West Virginia, a state with 56,000 wells, issued 19 penalties last year. And Wyoming, the center of Rocky Mountain energy, collected $15,500 in fines in 2010.

Pennsylvania, the most aggressive about fining violators, sought penalties for more than a quarter of the violations found last year. It levied fines for 4 percent of the violations, with the penalties totaling $3.7 million. The largest of those was a $900,000 fine against a drilling company that contaminated the water of 16 homes.

That was less than the profits the company makes in three hours.

Some states don’t even track key enforcement data, so regulators don’t know which companies have already been fined repeatedly.

This comes at a time of intense debate over how — or if — federal regulators should do more to monitor natural gas fracking. With the industry growing at around 50% a year, states are struggling to keep pace with the rate of expansion. A recent panel composed of industry professionals, put together by the Department of Energy, recently recommended that the Environmental Protection Agency finalize rules for regulating the practice:

We encourage EPA to complete its current rule making as it applies to shale gas production quickly, and explicitly include methane, a greenhouse gas, and controls from existing shale gas production sources. Additionally, some states have taken action in this area, and others could do so as well.

The Greenwire investigation also looked at oil production, another sector undergoing a substantial boom. Despite claims that Obama is blocking the oil industry, drillers are deploying more rigs today than they have since the mid-1980′s. That increase in activity is adding to the workload of state regulatory bodies, which have reportedly looked to these massive companies to fund investigations of their own violations:

Oil and gas companies are often national or international in scope, and when dealing with states, they start with the advantage of sheer size.

For example, Exxon Mobil’s 2010 revenues of $383 billion are several times the size of the state budget in California ($87 billion), the largest in the nation. Occidental Petroleum Corp. had 2010 revenues of $19 billion, larger than the budget of a midsized state such as Colorado, where it operates as Oxy USA.

At the level of state regulatory agencies, the numbers are much smaller, especially when it comes to fines.

One was, at the time, the largest fine in the history of the agency, $423,300 against Williams Production RMT Co. for poisoning the water supply of Ned Prather’s hunting cabin near DeBeque, Colo.

One day in May 2008, Prather arrived at his cabin and gulped down a cup of water from the kitchen sink. Right away, he told The Denver Post, his throat burned, his head throbbed and he felt like he was suffocating. His wife drove him to the hospital. Tests would later show the water had benzene and related chemicals at a concentration 20 times the safety limit.

State officials asked Williams to lead a group of local drillers with operations in the area to investigate whether drilling had contaminated Prather’s water.

Prather’s lawyer, Richard Djokic, compared the practice to letting the suspects investigate a murder.

“Imagine you have a body on the ground here, and we’re all standing around holding guns,” Djkokic told the Post. “A cop comes and says, ‘Figure out amongst yourselves who did this and let me know.’”

Companies in the fossil energy sector would prefer to see state-by-state regulations rather than stronger federal regulations. But are states equipped to handle the continued surge in drilling activity?

Yesterday, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced the Obama Administration’s highly anticipated plan for proposed offshore oil and gas leases from 2012-2017.  It focuses on exploration in the Gulf of Mexico and giving oil companies the chance to bid on drilling rights in Arctic waters, including the Beaufort and Chukchi seas and the Cook Inlet.

Because the plan targets areas with known potential for oil and gas development where exploration is currently active, the administration is ruling out drilling along the Pacific and Atlantic coasts — including an area near Virginia that had been slated for exploration prior to the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

The Arctic lease sales are scheduled late in the 5-year period to allow for further scientific study and data collection, and longer term planning for spill response preparedness and infrastructure. Deputy Secretary David Hayes also indicated that any expansion of Arctic exploration should account for the “Arctic’s unique environmental resources and the social, cultural, and subsistence needs of Native Alaskan communities.”

With the nearest Coast Guard station over 1,000 miles away and with few proven techniques for oil spill cleanup in extreme Arctic conditions, a spill in the Beaufort or Chukchi seas could devastate the entire region. “If a major spill were to occur in Arctic waters, cleanup crews would have to spend, on average, three to five days of each week simply standing by, watching helplessly as the blowout or spill continued to foul fragile Arctic ecosystems,” said World Wildlife Federation program director Rob Powell.

“Opening additional areas of drilling in the Arctic when we so clearly lack adequate response capabilities just confirms that we have apparently learned nothing from the worst offshore oil spill in our nation’s history,” said Michael Conathan, CAP’s Director of Ocean Policy in a statement to National Journal. “As tragic as the Deepwater Horizon disaster was, we must recognize that it occurred in relatively benign environmental conditions. That will not be the case with any spill in the Arctic.”

Shell plans to drill in the Beaufort Sea through October 31^st – for a snapshot of the actual worst-case scenario they should be prepared for at this time of year, one only needs to look to the hurricane-force storm, with 35-foot waves and 100mph winds, currently churning toward the Alaskan coast.  While the worst of the unprecedented storm is projected to target the Bering Sea, coastal residents along the Bering and Chukchi seas were urged to “not delay in taking needed precautions for this unusually severe and potentially life-threatening storm.”

While this plan would allow up to five additional years to develop adequate Arctic response capabilities, the Interior Department has not shown the same prudence in permitting Shell’s proposed drilling activity in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas under leases purchased earlier. Even though US Coast Guard Commandant Robert Papp recently told Congress that the US was not prepared to respond to an oil spill in Arctic waters, and lacking any proven method for responding to an oil spill in the region, BOEMRE conditionally approved Shell’s exploration plan for the Beaufort Sea in August.

Meanwhile, continuing to push for expanding drilling in the gulf seems to ignore a report released by Salazar’s own agency earlier this year which found “more than 70 percent of the tens of millions of offshore acres under lease are inactive, neither producing nor currently subject to approved or pending exploration or development plans. This includes almost 24 million inactive leased acres in the Gulf of Mexico.” Rather than investing BOEM’s already strained resources in permitting new areas, oil companies should first use the leases they already have.

The public now has 90 days to weigh in on the draft environmental impact statement and the proposed lease program, before the Interior Department can issue a final environmental impact statement and proposed final program. After another 60 days of review before Congress, the government could finalize the OCS leasing plan.

— Kiley Kroh is Associate Director of Ocean Communications at the Center for American Progress. CAP Intern Emma Huvos contributed to this report.