Fool’s Liquid Gold

The McArthur family were nothing out of the ordinary. Two parents, two kids, a dog. Rick was an electrician most of the time, high school football coach always. Amy was an elementary school teacher for Wake County. Their two kids, Katie and Rory, had just finished school for the year (Katie two weeks earlier because of her private high school, which she attended on a need-based scholarship). To celebrate the end of the school year, the family had saved for a week in Kitty Hawk, on the Outer Banks.

Once Rick’s big project at NC State didn’t need him anymore, the family made a beeline for the coast. They left the dog at a friend’s house and packed up their hybrid Toyota, which they traded in for when gas prices spiked.

Driving along Route 64, they realized everyone else had the same idea they had to go to the beach after school finished. Rick, never one to sit in traffic, turned off and north up I-95 in Rocky Mount, before exiting in Northampton County. Off the highway, the McArthurs were glued to their windows. From a high vantage point, they could see forests, or at least the ghosts of them. In the distance ahead a plume of steam or smoke rose.

The kids were perplexed. What had happened to the county? A forest fire? Was it still burning? Amy and Rick didn’t know. They certainly had heard of a forest fire. If there had been one, wouldn’t they have seen the smoke at home? They hadn’t gone very far. Back in their younger days, Amy had protested with her friends against deforestation in the Amazon. That was always so far away, though. This was less than an hour from their house. The kids, 17 states into the all-important license plate collecting game, were stunned into silence as they turned towards the coast.

The mood was livened a little once they passed through Elizabeth City. They could see water! The forest was behind them now, only a little while before they settled into their beach rental. They had brought every beach item they owned with them. A football for Rick and Rory. A metal detector for Katie. A beach read for Amy that she had started the same time last year. Boogie boards, skim balls, towels, trowels, and sunscreen all nearly popping out of the tailgate.

It didn’t take them long after they’d pulled into the house for the kids to run to the beach. They left Rick and Amy to carry all their belongings, naturally. Rory had done the whole drive in his swim trunks. Luckily the house had a little wagon to pull all their chairs. Pulling onto the beach they saw a familiar sight: chairs and umbrellas for miles on either side of them. Kids running around as the wind whipped hats off of heads. And, off the coast, something new that hadn’t existed in their childhood: offshore oil rigs.

Rick and Amy didn’t know each other then, but they had grown up coming to this same beach. It was still full of tourists in the 2010s, but there was a fantastic seafood restaurant scene. Now, when they could afford a restaurant meal, they told their kids to avoid NC-caught fish. The only boats visible off the coast were those ferrying the roustabouts and roughnecks out to the rigs.

Their kids stood at the water’s edge, not going any farther into the water. Every time a wave came up they hurried back towards the beach. They knew what the flag on the lifeguard stand meant: no flames, no swimming. It just had a picture of an oil drum on it. The water, normally blue and refreshing, had a thin black film on it. Katie ran back up to her parents.

“Sorry, honey.” Amy said. “We promised this year would be different.” Katie replied “It’s not your fault, mom. It happens every year.”

The McArthur family are nothing out of the ordinary. They are the average North Carolina family. The state they love is at risk, not just from transplants like me.

Photo: Dogwood Alliance.

Enviva wood pellet plants are destroying forest cover, clear-cutting over 33,000 acres in Northampton County alone. These wood pellets are supposedly carbon neutral, but that is only the case when the trees are replanted and regrown. Also, the pellets are shipped overseas to be burned. While it helps to lower the carbon emissions of Europe on paper, it is putting more carbon into the atmosphere while destroying North Carolina. Inland forests aren’t the only part of the state at risk, though.

Recent Trump Administration policy has suggested opening up most of the Pacific and Gulf coast to offshore drilling. The idea was initially to include Atlantic sites as well, and it may in the future. While it has faced bipartisan opposition, Senator Thom Tillis has expressed openness to the idea of oil rigs, so long as they are out of sight. I applaud Sen. Tillis on his call for offshore wind turbines off the Carolinian coast, but I disagree that oil platforms are environmentally or economically viable.

To their credit, many on both sides of the aisle are standing against this ridiculous notion. Governors Josh Stein (D-NC) and Henry McMaster (R-SC) issued a statement in June 2025 on the initial idea. Now, Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) urged the Department of the Interior to avoid drilling off of the South Carolina coast. I hope they succeed. For North Carolina families, the beach is their birthright. Offshore drilling threatens both the underwater ecosystem and the tourism that is the backbone of the region.

For the McArthur family, and the thousands of families they represent, North Carolina has to resist the greenwashed wood pellet industry and false promises of cheap and clean offshore oil.

RCC Presidential Fellow – Ewan Dignon

RCC Presidential Fellow Ewan Dignon is the co-lead of the RCC Coasts and Ocean program. He is an undergraduate at Duke University studying Public Policy (B.A.) and Economics (B.A.) with a minor in Environmental Sciences and Policy. Born in San Francisco, he grew up along the Connecticut shoreline. Before going to Duke, Ewan worked in local and congressional political campaigns, fostering a passion for advocacy and policy work. At Duke, he worked on a research team studying the formation of ghost forests along the North Carolina coast, examining the economic cause-and-effect relationship between development and environmental change.