OUR MOMENT OF OBLIGATION TO THE FUTURE: encore’s exclusive interview with Jean-Michel Cousteau, and how the realities of anthropogenic climate change answer the question “To Drill or Not To Drill?”

Last Tuesday evening, as the sun sank into the Cape Fear River, hundreds gathered at CFCC's Wilson Center to hear two international experts debate about whether or not North Carolina should pursue oil drilling off of our coast. The speakers were Jean-Michel Cousteau, son of famed explorer Jacques Cousteau and President of the Ocean Futures Society, and John Hofmeister, former President of the Shell Oil Company. WECT anchor Jon Evans moderated the discussion. Titled, “To Drill or Not to Drill?,” the event was hosted by a group called The Public Square, a self-described “collaborative effort to grow civility in the region by addressing relevant, controversial issues in a respectful forum.” Outside, protesters from Save Our Sea waved “Protect Our Coast” signs at passing traffic on Third Street, and rallied around a steamer-trunk-sized black model oil rig that had traveled across the state, gathering signatures against offshore drilling. The clouds glowed pink as the daylight died in the west.

Before the debate began, encore was able to ask Mr. Cousteau two questions. His answers are published here in their entirety.

encore: What is the biggest problem facing our oceans today, both globally and locally?

Jean-Michel Cousteau: Well, it's the emission of CO2, which is responsible for the increase of the temperature of the ocean which rises as a result of the temperature; the amount of acidification which is affecting coral reefs and many other species; and the fact that the energy which is accumulating in the ocean is now being transferred into hurricanes – storms which, instead of being let's say a hurricane number three, becomes a hurricane number four or number five. And that we just lived, we just experienced. If we're not learning from that, then I don't know what to believe. And we know where [the carbon emissions are] coming from. And I'm not accusing or pointing fingers, but I'm saying to the industries and government, there are huge other opportunities to get energy which has nothing to do with the oil industry. And we know what to do.

When it comes to North Carolina, we want to protect tourism, we want to protect the fishing industry, we want to protect the people. Strictly from an economical point of view, drilling oil would put out of business a lot of people. If you measure the gain and the loss, we losing if the oil goes.

e: Any thoughts on what an individual person can do to help protect our ocean and natural resources?

J-M C: Talk to your mayor! Talk to your neighbors! Talk to your representatives! And never never point a finger. Ask for a dialogue, to sit down, to make them realize they have family, they have children, they have grandchildren. Do they care [about] making the voyage between [their] moment of obligation [and] the future? And people say oh yeah, you're right. And it works. I've done it with many people.

THE PUBLIC SQUARE: Click the link for WECT's Off-Shore Drilling Debate coverage.

The debate was civil. In his opening remarks, Mr. Cousteau spoke of how our health was tied directly to the health of the ocean. It is in the water (or wine) we drink. It is not a “universal sewer,” but a medium through which we are all connected. He also spoke of the new technologies now being developed which could move us towards a future without fossil fuels: solar and wind, of course, but also the use of ocean and tidal currents to generate energy, or using the difference in temperature between the deep and shallow ocean.

Mr. Hofmeister opened by speaking of the thousands of people the oil industry employs in the Gulf. Every day, America depends on the energy found in 7 million barrels of oil, he said, and they do not produce themselves. He called the waters off the coast a “frontier area,” meaning “we don’t know what’s there,” so before a drill bit goes into the sea floor, there’s about a ten-year period of exploration and research. No one will build a rig if it’s not economically feasible, he says, but now we just don’t know. He admitted that no one in the industry loves oil (calling it “the devil’s excrement”), but, he said, it works.

Both men agreed that the Deepwater Horizon oil spill was a tragedy. Mr. Hofmeister said that he lobbied against the use of a dispersant, which entrenched toxic chemicals deeper into the ecosystem, out of sight but not out. The decision to use them was political, he said. Cousteau said the devastation was still going on, and spoke of the dolphins he saw giving birth and breastfeeding their young in oil.

Debate moved to the effects of sonar exploration on marine mammals. Hofmeister said the companies could track whales and wouldn’t explore during those times they were in the area. Cousteau said whales communicate with each other up to 1000 miles away; sound waves bounce between water layers, sending disruptive noises extraordinarily far.

There was a moment during the debate, when Jon Evans posed the question, “If we were to drill, how would we do it safely?” John Hofmeister said we could build our knowledge base, take nothing for granted, and nothing would happen until the government issues the oil company an “environmental impact statement.” When the question was asked of Cousteau, he looked at Evans incredulously, speechless for a moment, as if to say, we can’t – haven't you been listening? And in that moment of stunned silence, the crowd burst spontaneously into applause. “I worry about the money spent to find out [if there is oil.] That money should be put into renewable energy,” he finally said, to more applause.

In his closing remarks, Cousteau encouraged the oil companies to invest in renewable energy, and mentioned again how much we depend on the ocean. “If you protect the ocean, you protect yourself,” he said. Hofmeister spoke about time, and said Americans can’t remember tomorrow what happened yesterday. Often, he said, we make instant decisions based on opinion from slogans or pictures. If we do drill, he said, we need to take the time to do it right. These are complex decisions which have the potential to employ tens of thousands, and keep the price of fuel affordable to the average citizen. “But we need to take the time to do it right,” he said.

After the debate, the members of the audience I spoke with were perturbed that climate change was not given a larger portion of the discussion. Dr. Alena Szmant, a professor at UNCW who has studied coral reefs for fifty years and seen firsthand the damage anthropogenic climate change is wreaking on that vital habitat, says that while she is against oiled coastlines and deafened marine mammals as much as the next environmentalist, these issues “pale in comparison” to what climate change is doing to local and global environments.

She gave me a sobering fact on which to ruminate. Referencing a 2012 Rolling Stone article by well-respected climate writer Bill McKibben, she said that the carbon contained in the world's known oil reserves – the carbon we are already planning to release into the atmosphere by burning for energy – was 2,795 gigatons. The 2009 Copenhagen climate conference, a gathering of scientists and policymakers from 187 countries responsible for 87 percent of the world’s carbon emissions, formally recognized “the scientific view that the increase in global temperature should be below two degrees Celsius.” To raise the global temperature by more than this “tipping point” would be to invite disaster; I say this without hyperbole. We could expect rising seas, more frequent and intense hurricanes, and staple crops failing due to heat. We are already beginning to see evidence of this, and need look no further than Puerto Rico or Houston. To stay below the 2º C limit, scientists estimate humanity would need to emit fewer than 565 gigatons of carbon by 2050. For English majors like myself who are bad at math, Dr. Szmant laid it out: we already know the whereabouts of enough oil to exceed the 2º C limit (and cook the planet like a Sunday roast), five times over.

So why even consider looking for more?

Permit me, if you will, to engage in a thought experiment about the realities of anthropogenic climate change that I think Mr. Cousteau, as a fellow mariner, might appreciate. Say you're on a ship, and you're sailing along across the sea. Everyone you love – friends, family, offspring, pets – is onboard with you. It's a little foggy out, and your visibility is reduced. You can't see with your own eyes where you will be in a few minutes. But all of your available scientific instruments – the radar, the charts, the depth sounder, tools you use to see what you can’t with your own eyes– are telling you that there's a rocky coastline up ahead. You have built up momentum, and you are moving at such a speed towards the obstacle that if you don't make a change in course right now, it will be too late to avoid it. Would you choose to turn immediately, to be cautious and safe, to protect the lives onboard and trust what your scientific instruments are telling you? Or would you ignore the mounting evidence and carry on in blissful ignorance, asking, if there are rocks ahead, how can we hit them gently?