Gateway Pacific Terminal: Deepening the Conflict

I noticed a discrepancy in my last posting (Gateway Pacific Terminal: Developing the Conflict). I stated that the cheaper the price of coal now, the more dependent China becomes upon coal, hence a more lasting demand on coal. I also said that the higher the price charged for coal, the more revenue mining companies earn on each remaining unit of a finite resource. I defined “finite” in the sense of a resource becoming increasingly dangerous & difficult to extract. That said, given enough demand, it will remain economically feasible to extract the resource at higher and higher stakes.

So, in a sense, by charging a relatively low price for coal now, we are able to hook China on fossil energy by virtue of the lasting infrastructure they develop during the next decade. This “new opium” may in fact be a viable means of balancing the trade deficit as their growing demand and rising prices justify further extraction of US coal.

I can see this move as unequivocally good for the US economy.

Finally we have a good they cannot resist, at least, unless they create strict measures to curb dependence on fossil fuels. Never mind that they have their own coal reserves perfectly ready to exploit once the price of foreign fuels climbs too high.

So, now that we have hit upon a way to permanently secure our economic superiority, we can focus on mitigating some of the less desirable impacts.

One of these is the so-called “brown cloud”. Because we have no way yet of reversing the westerly winds that travel across the Pacific, we are subject to whatever particulate pollutants drift across the ocean from China. Ever wonder why toxic mercury should be found in Alaskan salmon, when US mercury emissions have been under government control since 1990 (“Mercury: Controlling Power Plant Emissions." US EPA)? This is one of the unfortunate consequences of living downwind from neighboring China.

Image Credit: Damion Design 2009

We can’t regulate what China burns. We cannot force them to use “clean-burning” technology like our own. That would be under the jurisdiction of the UN, which is notoriously lacking in its decision-making abilities and follow-through. Our best bet would be to amass wealth from the transaction of coal, in the future event we need to put military sanctions on China for not living up to our standards of environmental compliance.

For how military spending may bring returns as a source of innovation, see this New York Times article, cited by Norm Becker in his post "The Permanent Militarization Of The US".