Shell Oil Moves to Attempt Development In Arctic Ocean Near Alaska

Because the U.S. economy is somewhat moribund on energy progress into newer, cleaner forms global oil corporations like Dutch Shell have made billions and billions of dollars developing oil prospects in ecospherically sensitive area. Alaska is again a target for oil development that is generally deathly for substantial biospheric elements.

http://www.adn.com/2011/12/03/2201550/shell-gambles-billions-in-arctic.html

It is rotten to be without a job in Alaska. The weather is tough and injury and death in the cold are not rare. Anchorage is a city that has lost its historically more frontier sociality and has transitioned into being a safe, tight corporate city-state that global corporation partner with politicians. The city of Juneau has itself tightened up and eliminated about all free wireless Internet access through which independents might post. Fewer than two or three Internet portals exist at no cost, and a state capital ought to be completely wired in order to encourage free enterprise Internet venturing.

The employed can be fired if they write from their own homes in antipathetic expression to global corporate political takeover.

Corporatism is a political economy upgraded since Mussolini and Hitler's day to become a state dominated by add hoc concentrated wealth that represses individual liberty and democracy making one feel that they live in a mild form of Soviet evil empire with the corporate communards being the lucky goons with good paychecks. Alternative individual development should be regarded as worth respecting in an actual democratic political environment instead.

Oil development costs the public billions or trillions in opportunity lost for better domestic transportation schemes that are shelved. Oil does work of course, yet it is just one technology that is over-exploited and too influential politically. Alaska could use super-conducting power lines to power electric vehicles in new ways of moving about, yet who would invest in that when the potential to spill oil under the Arctic Ice exists instead?

Oil, drilling fluids and other toxic materials released under the ice may travel for months before observation by non-corporate personnel. Arctic ocean currents may move and somewhat disperse pollutants far away from a sporadic point source. No records are kept of the total history of noise pollution in the water adversely impacting arctic sea mammals.

Shell is building its own icebreaker so it will match the U.S. Coast Guard fleet in that. One would prefer a better, more ecospherically benign and diversified employer portfolio in Alaska rather than the cash-heavy, whale insulting oil industry as the jewel in every Governor's eye.