Buddy, it seems we're witnessing first hand an amazing drama/contest over the future of human civilization, and drilling in the Arctic is symbolic of how that fight is going.
Renewables and EVs now look like they're inevitable (eg. Tesla's rubber is hitting the road, as they've started actual battery production at the Gigafactory, Samsung just announced a next gen battery ), but on the other hand oil and coal and gas still occupy something like 90% of energy consumption, compared to 1-2% for renewables, so we really don't know if renewables are going to get deployed fast enough to win this one. Their deployment rates will have to keep doubling every few years, which is possible, but I'm not sure if it'll be enough. Kevin Anderson sure doesn't think we will avoid catastrophe.
Things will get really interesting if there is an oil supply restriction that causes an oil price spike in 2018 (
https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/brace-for-the-financial-crash-of-2018-b2f81f85686b#.jsj28dalh ) - would an economic crash cause people to switch to EVs faster, or would they hang on to their ICEs for longer because of economic uncertainty? Or would a global economic crash slow down capital expenditures on renewables? Or would it restrict riskier expenditures like Arctic drilling? Russia is probably committed to Arctic exploration no matter what happens or what the cost is, I expect Putin to double down no matter what. His whole structure of power is based on producing oil.
There is also much talk of the developing world leapfrogging coal based grids and going straight to distributed renewables, much as they leapfrogged landline telephones and went straight to cells, but if they're starving and impoverished due to climate induced droughts + a global financial meltdown, will that transition actually happen? I guess that depends on the proportion of people in the developing world who are affected that way compared to the number of people who manage to stay out of poverty.
I check sites like cleantechnica every day, just to look for some positive news in this ongoing battle. I have no idea how it's going to go, except that even if we as the human race do really well, we're still going to get into a climatic danger zone somewhere over 2C. The big question is how far past 2C and what are the impacts? My opinion is 2.4C increases our chances much more than 2.5C, so it's well worth fighting for every 0.1C we can get.