There is another huge problem with Shell's plan to drill for oil in the Arctic: The whole project—which is expensive, very risky, and politically controversial—is likely to lose lots of money for a long time and may never even be profitable. The reason for this is explained clearly in a post on Bloomberg: Oil is dirt cheap at this moment. To make matters worse, many analysts believe it may never be expensive again. The world is "awash in oil." Also, demand for it isn't rising fast enough to keep prices high. Also, the world is seriously looking at other energy alternatives and beginning to freak out about climate change. The $100-a-barrel days may never exist anywhere else but in the past, and the scale and expense of the Arctic plan (seven years in the making and $6 billion in the hole) will only make its money back if oil prices are high in the distant future.

So, along with market uncertainty, you have this list of other big challenges, pointed out by Bloomberg:

The Arctic is prone to weather that can affect navigation, even in the summer drilling season. Shell has already stumbled there; a botched 2012 effort, when a drilling rig ran aground, spurred investigations by the Coast Guard and Interior, which turned up major environmental and safety concerns. On Thursday, environmentalists in kayaks faced off against a Shell rig in Seattle's harbor, just a taste of the activism and PR challenge to come.

As if all of this weren't enough of a deterrent, the shale oil industry, a less financially risky business than Arctic drilling, has been hurt badly by low prices. Though production is still very slowly rising, last year there were 2,000 rigs destroying the environment in a number of states. This year, the number has dropped to nearly 800. And the industry can only survive if prices for a barrel range between $45 and $65—currently it's at $65, but prices could easily fall, which is what the Saudis desire because they want to crush the competition.

So, why bother with all of this trouble and risk? Why not just kill the Arctic project and cut your losses and all of the bad press? This is the more rational thing to do if you are a true capitalist. And that might be a part of the problem: The oil industry is not truly capitalistic but supported heavily by the state (subsidies for Big Oil are estimated by the International Monetary Fund to be an astonishing $5 trillion a year—solar power would really be something else if it were getting that kind of dough).

That said, Shell's financial standing is also shaped by its proved reserves, the amount of oil and gas it has in the ground. As writer McKenzie Funk pointed out in the New York Times Magazine, "reserves" from unconventional oil projects are "proved" when oil prices are high. So Shell could be betting on this scenario: Oil prices bounce back by the time Arctic oil and gas begin to come online, which could take a decade or more. That bet also assumes that we do little to avert disastrous climate change by changing our fossil fuel consumption and production habits.

Funk has called that calculation a cold one. But we must not exclude the power of spite in this matter. Shell might just be giving activists, concerned citizens, and the world as a whole a big and very expensive middle finger. Fuck all of you! We rule everything. We want to put this Arctic drilling monster right in your fucking face. And we did! And you can do nothing about it! And we get so much pleasure from the fact that we can just do whatever the (S)hell we want!

Let's not rule out spite. It is, after all, the most human of traits. The idea of hurting yourself for the purpose of harming your enemy or someone who broke your heart is lost to most animals. But not humans.