Who Saved More Whales – James T. Kirk, or John D. Rockefeller?

 

A staple of “green” management is that any project that tends to kill off significant numbers of animals – even animals that are dangerous, or ones nobody has ever heard of, like Great White Sharks or Snail Darters – is inherently bad. This, of course, raises the question if the converse is true, that projects that tend to save animals’ lives – particularly endangered animals – should be considered good, or at least green.

In Star Trek IV, The Voyage Home (Paramount Pictures, 1986) the officers of the recently-destroyed U.S.S. Enterprise go back in time in a Klingon star ship in an attempt to reintroduce humpback whales into the Earth’s ecosystem, since whales are extinct in the 23^rd Century. Of course, our heroes succeed, and the world’s cataclysmic end, set in motion by those ignorant, un-green humans of previous centuries, has been averted. Great news, right?

A couple of problems. First, in real life, the whales’ populations have been increasing steadily since 1950. The International Whaling Commission, as sensitive as they are to any possible injury to whales, is estimating that the humpback whale population has been increasing by 10% per year for decades, and the species is nearing its pre-hunted (“unexploited”) population rapidly. Barring the sudden onset of some widespread, massively self-destructive behavior, such as spending time trying to “Keep Up With The Kardashians,” the humpback population should certainly be robust enough to respond to any future rocky, cylindrical alien probe sent to communicate with them, but ends up filling the planet’s skies with humanity-threatening thick clouds instead.

So, why are the whales doing better? In Paul Soloman’s Public Broadcasting System-sponsored blog, “The Business Deck,” he spent a bit of space attempting to overturn the “Whale Oil Myth.” This “myth” is that, when kerosene became plentiful and cheap, it was simply no longer economical to hunt whales, whose main retail product was the whale oil that lit the streets of Europe and the eastern United States for decades.  As part of his attempt to perform this overturning, he includes the following table:

By 1850 a consumer had a choice of:

* Camphene or "burning fluid" -- 50 cents/gallon (combinations of alcohol, turpentine and camphor oil - bright, sweet smelling)
* whale oil -- $1.30 to $2.50/gallon
* lard oil -- 90 cents (low quality, smelly)
* coal oil -- 50 cents (sooty, smelly, low quality) (the original "kerosene")
* kerosene from petroleum -- 60 cents (introduced in early 1860s)

The implications here should be obvious, even by PBS analyst standards. If kerosene, which performed the function of fueling lamps better than whale oil could, was available from half to one-quarter of the cost of whale oil, then the whaling industry was doomed. Soloman goes on to offer up some truly strange analysis, such as the amount of whale oil harvested in a given year, divided by the Earth’s human population (???), in trying to assert that the availability of abundant supplies of cheap kerosene did not save the whales, but they fall comically short. Clearly, it was kerosene that replaced the demand for dead whales and their oil.

So, where did the kerosene come from? John D. Rockefeller began working in the oil business in 1866. By 1890, his Standard Oil represented 90% of all American petrochemical production. Strangely enough, Standard Oil is not known for being “green” – quite the opposite, in fact.  Oil companies in general are widely believed to be bandit-like polluters, even if a large number of dead animals can’t be laid at their doorstep.

So, which industry is causing widespread wild animal destruction? The Wildorado Wind Ranch, outside of Amarillo, Texas, sits on 16,000 acres, and generates enough electricity to meet the demands of 50,000 households, Unfortunately, the blades of the turbines tend to kill a large number of migratory birds, to the point that the farm is colloquially known as a “bird Quisenart.” How many birds is the topic of some debate; but, by contrast, the Public Service Company of New Mexico’s San Juan Power Plant, fired mostly by coal, provides power to 40 times the number of customers, without killing off a large number of any animals whatsoever. Just as with Standard Oil, PNM will never receive the credit it deserves for being “green.” They are, in fact, the target of a supposedly green advocacy group’s PR campaign, attempting to portray them as decidedly environ-unfriendly.

But I’m wondering … is that right?