Lock-in: how today's oil drilling fuels tomorrows political and economic problems

As Obama opens the Arctic for oil drilling, is he also making it harder for America to wean itself from its dependence on fossil fuels?

Earlier this month, the fossil fuel economy was confronted with two stark reality checks. The first, a scientific study on the effects of fuel combustion, showed that if we burned all the fossil fuels in the world, roughly 10 trillion tons of carbon would be released, causing global temperatures to soar. The Antarctic ice sheet would melt, the study reported, releasing enough water to raise global sea levels by 58 meters. The effects would be felt for millennia.

The same day that the fossil fuel study came out, Goldman Sachs warned that the oil market is "even more oversupplied than we had expected", and that the oil surplus is likely to continue in 2016.