![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thatcrazycajun...is not the economic and ecological disaster it's about to wreak, which Louisiana and the Gulf Coast damn sure did NOT need only five years into the decade-long rebuilding effort from the destruction already caused by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Nor is it the revelation that British Petroleum was either stunningly incompetent or deliberately dishonest in estimating how much crude oil is being spewed each day from the hole in the Gulf of Mexico's floor left open by the explosion and sinking of its Deepwater Horizon rig. Or the fact that, if not stanched soon, it will foul the coastline from Texas all the way to Florida with a quantity of oil larger than that left in Alaska's Prince William Sound by the crackup of the Exxon Valdez decades ago.
No, the real sadness is that any hopes that this disaster would finally make clear to those who oppose limiting our offshore oil exploration in ecologically sensitive areas of our coastal waters, or weaning ourselves as a nation off our politically and scientifically dangerous addiction to petroleum, why such measures are needed and vital will inevitably be dashed by human stubbornness and denial. You would think that this experience, on top of the Alaska incident and numerous others like it over the decades since oil became our chief source of transport energy, would finally educate the "drill, baby, drill" crowd. But despite what my rightward friends probably think, I'm not that stupid or naïve to ignore the lessons of bitter experience.
Yes, I know that dozens of other oil rigs operate day in and day out without incident. (It's like airliners—you only read in the news about the tiny handful of flights that crash, get blown up or hijacked, not the hundreds that arrive safely.) And I am NOT suggesting we should immediately halt all drilling offshore, much though I would love to see that happen (sh'yeah, right!). I know we can't wean ourselves off the dead dinosaurs that quickly. But there should still be some reasonable limits in place, as well as better-than-adequate safeguards and monitoring by both the proprietors and the government, to keep this from happening again. (As this Associated Press story reports, the Deepwater Horizon already had a history of problems that went largely ignored before last week's explosion.) This includes developing a reasonable Plan B for if (or more likely, when) a rig's blowout preventer fails...not to mention learning from this debacle to develop more effective ways of capping blown-out wells a mile or more underwater, and for containing the future spills that will happen nonetheless.
And above all, we need to realize that oil is one of our two dirtiest, most dangerous energy sources (coal being the other). And that it is a finite resource that will, sooner or later, be exhausted. (Do the words "peak oil" mean anything to you?) Dead dinosaurs are like what Lex Luthor's daddy used to say about land: they're valuable because nobody's making any more of them. The sooner we develop alternative energy sources that can be scaled up to replace oil and coal, the sooner we can get the slimy monkey off our national back...and the sooner we can stop entrusting the safety of our environment, our economy and our borders to the likes of BP.
No, the real sadness is that any hopes that this disaster would finally make clear to those who oppose limiting our offshore oil exploration in ecologically sensitive areas of our coastal waters, or weaning ourselves as a nation off our politically and scientifically dangerous addiction to petroleum, why such measures are needed and vital will inevitably be dashed by human stubbornness and denial. You would think that this experience, on top of the Alaska incident and numerous others like it over the decades since oil became our chief source of transport energy, would finally educate the "drill, baby, drill" crowd. But despite what my rightward friends probably think, I'm not that stupid or naïve to ignore the lessons of bitter experience.
Yes, I know that dozens of other oil rigs operate day in and day out without incident. (It's like airliners—you only read in the news about the tiny handful of flights that crash, get blown up or hijacked, not the hundreds that arrive safely.) And I am NOT suggesting we should immediately halt all drilling offshore, much though I would love to see that happen (sh'yeah, right!). I know we can't wean ourselves off the dead dinosaurs that quickly. But there should still be some reasonable limits in place, as well as better-than-adequate safeguards and monitoring by both the proprietors and the government, to keep this from happening again. (As this Associated Press story reports, the Deepwater Horizon already had a history of problems that went largely ignored before last week's explosion.) This includes developing a reasonable Plan B for if (or more likely, when) a rig's blowout preventer fails...not to mention learning from this debacle to develop more effective ways of capping blown-out wells a mile or more underwater, and for containing the future spills that will happen nonetheless.
And above all, we need to realize that oil is one of our two dirtiest, most dangerous energy sources (coal being the other). And that it is a finite resource that will, sooner or later, be exhausted. (Do the words "peak oil" mean anything to you?) Dead dinosaurs are like what Lex Luthor's daddy used to say about land: they're valuable because nobody's making any more of them. The sooner we develop alternative energy sources that can be scaled up to replace oil and coal, the sooner we can get the slimy monkey off our national back...and the sooner we can stop entrusting the safety of our environment, our economy and our borders to the likes of BP.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-05-01 08:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-01 09:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-01 10:01 pm (UTC)And you're saying people are NOT rethinking the wisdom of drilling offshore. What evidence do you have that people are not rethinking their position in the light of this tragedy?
no subject
Date: 2010-05-02 01:24 am (UTC)Republicans actually ARE changing their minds...
Date: 2010-05-05 11:09 pm (UTC)