Moral Superiority

Frequently in the news or broadcast media, or even in movies, TV shows, and conversations, a position is taken with an underlying assumption of unquestionable moral superiority over other positions.  For example, a recent editorial overtly took the position that closing the Book Cliffs in eastern Utah to oil and gas exploration was morally superior to allowing drilling.  They never bothered to justify their position, they were so sure it's obvious to everyone that this is the moral thing to do.  Those who are called "environmentalists" often work from an assumption of unquestionable moral superiority, but it happens on a lot of topics -- health care, welfare, tax rates, energy (of all types), and myriad political issues.

I challenge the notion that closing an area to mineral exploration is morally superior to allowing mineral exploration.  It was this topic that led me to write "Imagine There's No Oil," another post on this blog.

Look at the materials you use and depend on every day, and consider this: if it wasn't grown, it was mined.  Think about that for a moment as you look around you.  Here in my office, for example, the only things that were not mined are paper and wood products, and they were logged (often farmed).  The plastics, glass, synthetic building materials and fabrics, ink, lightbulbs, metals, paint, and if you really want to get detailed, even some of the food ingredients you eat were all mined.  Your entire computer was mined.  You know about metals, but did you realize that plastics are made from oil and other mined materials?  Electricity is generated by machines that were made from mined materials, and most in the U.S. is fueled by coal, gas, or nuclear fuel.  Solar panel materials were mined.  Same with wind turbines.  Batteries are made of materials from open-pit mines (what do you think of the Prius now?).

Medicines depend heavily on mined materials, including oil and gas as the stock for carbon.  Farming depends heavily on fertilizers and pesticides, which come from mined source materials -- not to mention water, which in much of the U.S. is pumped (mined) out of the ground.

Natural resources are where they ARE.  We cannot choose where to go to get them.  There are certainly beautiful places we should never disturb, but they are unusual and few in number (Yosemite comes to mind).  The Book Cliffs, the Escalante staircase, and ANWR are simply not in the same category.

So imagine there's no oil, no metals, no raw materials for all these things.  Or at least imagine they all become very expensive because of opposition to their development.  Imagine the resulting poverty, hunger, disease, economic strife, and lower standard of living.  Is that really a morally superior position?

I think not.