Why… oh why… do we wait until it slaps us in the face?
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- Category: Jeremy Addis-Mills
- Published on Monday, 10 May 2010 18:49
- Written by Jaddis-Mills
In the world of environmental disasters, the current ecological disaster that hit the Gulf Coast will no doubt rank among one of the world’s worst environmental disasters. At the time I’m writing this blog, the overall environmental or economic impacts of this oil spill has yet to be determined. Regardless, I am sure of one thing: offshore oil drilling must not be that safe!!!!
For those of you that have been living in a bubble, a deepwater drilling rig contracted by BP, caught fire about two weeks ago, burned, and sank into the ocean. As a result of its sinking in conjunction with a failed shut-off valve, oil is now gushing from an underground well at the rate of millions of barrels a day into the Gulf of Mexico. The response to rectifying this issue has been swift and quick. Massive protection efforts along parts of ecologically sensitive gulf coastline are being conducted. As of May 10th, the oil has reached the gulf coast and BP still has not been able to stop or even slow down the leaking well. Underwater submarines and the proposed giant metal and cement box were unsuccessful in stopping the leak. Believe it or not, the new idea is to force trash at high speed into the well to clog it.
An ultimate cause of the fire that resulted in the sinking of the deepwater drilling rig has not been determined. There does seem to be pretty significant evidence that indicates that an emergency shutoff valve did not activate. The evidence of this is… the well is spewing oil into the ocean as we speak. The safety valve’s only function was to prevent an incident like this from occurring. Whether BP is to blame, the company that owned the rig, or the manufacturer of the valve is not my focus. I think they are all a little to blame, but what is more relevant to discuss is the need for U.S. energy policy to move away from dirty fossil fuels to more environmentally-sound methods of energy production.
This is not the first and unfortunately will not likely be the last time that an oil spill will have catastrophic effects an ocean ecosystem. The very presence of the oilrigs and the drill has an impact. The negative effects are not only environmental; weeks before this oil spill, a fire in the Big Branch coal mine in West Virginia killed workers after an underground explosion occurred. The economic impacts are also being felt all along the gulf coast as tourism has been hampered. This is to say nothing of the effect on the shrimp and blue crab industries, to name a few.
So I have to ask, when are we going to wake up and realize the future of energy is not in clean coal, offshore oil drilling, or any other fictitiously safe fossil fuel technologies? Technologies like clean coal and safe offshore oil drilling or shale oil removal are just more of the same old dinosaurs wrapped in a new bow. These incarnations still pose the same catastrophic risk to the environment, human life, and our economy. We need invest more in clean technologies like wind, solar, and geothermal power, to name a few. We can’t solely depend on these technologies today or tomorrow, but with the right investment, these technologies have the serious potential to replace fossil fuels. It is finally time for an energy policy that takes alternative energy technologies seriously and invests in them at the levels needed to make them viable against an entrenched fossil fuel oligopoly.
I will leave you with this: 6 years from now when Republican presidential nominee Eric Cantor and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden are fighting over “who feels the common man’s pain” more surrounding high summer fuel prices, let’s all remember that 9 years prior, President Obama had played that same game with McCain and called for more offshore oil drilling, only to be slapped with the stark reality that OFFSHORE DRILLING IS NOT ALWAYS SAFE.
