WSJ: Iran Is a Major Environmental Offender
A subscription-only article in the Wall Street Journal earlier this week pointed out why enviros, most of whom can be counted in the anti-war, anti-Bush, anti-Republican, anti-capitalist camps, should consider switching sides:
As the country has grown wealthier selling oil and gas, Iranians have themselves become large consumers of energy. Government subsidies, which make energy nearly free to consumers and businesses, stoke the demand further.
At the same time, a combination of Western sanctions and Iranian policies has discouraged foreign investment in oil fields, causing production to stagnate. The result: Iran’s oil exports could dry up in as little as a decade, according to some who have studied the situation.
That’s a looming disaster for Iran, which derives about 85% of its export income from the sale of oil. “The industry is in a crisis,” says Mehdi Varzi, a former Iranian diplomat and national oil company official who heads a London-based consulting company, Varzi Energy.
The impact would be felt far beyond Iran. The country produced 3.8 million barrels of oil a day in 2006, almost 5% of the world’s total supply, according to the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. It exported an average of about 2.5 million barrels of that each day. Should those sales decline, Iran’s largest customers, Japan and China, would scramble for other supplies, pushing up prices for everyone.
I believe that no matter how ugly Iran’s environmental offenses are, and no matter their impact on the environment in other parts of the world as users search for substitute oil sources, the true believers in the environmental movement will never switch sides, simply because they are first and foremost anti-capitalist, anti-free markets, and above all anti-US, regardless of the consequences.
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UPDATE: I should add that I would welcome being proven wrong on this one. I’m not optimistic.
