As I sit here on an unusually cold and rainy May 25th, my thoughts go out to the many people who are trying to figure out what their lives will be like when the full ramifications of the devastating oil leak in the Gulf are brought to light. The immediate concern is all about the economics of the situation: the lost jobs in the tourism business; the loss to shrimpers and fishermen; the increase in price for seafood product; the cost to BP, Transocean, and the other players involved in that oil rig for cleanup and compensation; the legal battles that will ensue; the stock price of BP; the price of a gallon of gasoline, etc. Yet, the impacts are so far reaching that it is almost impossible to quantify. Lives are changed overnight; sources of income dwindle or dry up; family plans are severely altered, whether you’re a fisherman or a small storekeeper in a Louisiana town…you know..the “trickle down” economy. It will ultimately effect every single human being in one way or another.
To me, there are several other major concerns. Of course, the money aspect is important, and is the driving force behind everything. But probably more important is the ecological damage this huge oil spill will create for many, many years to come. The loss of habitat, the loss of species, and the change in natural biological, physical, and chemical processes may be confined to that small footprint in the Gulf; but it is another man-made attack at the very fiber of this planet. Some say that the however many millions of gallons leaked is tiny compared to what is normally excreted everyday around the world. The problems of fisheries depletion, forest loss, desertification, etc. all stem from the culmination of leaking oil, dumping of a waste product, the cutting of a single tree. Our technological appetite is not going to destroy the environment; it is slowly changing it in ways that we must continually adapt to stay ahead of the game. At some point, Mother Nature will catch up to us.
The other concern I have is how much we are at the mercy of technology. By technology, I am clumping together the science, machinery, corporations, government, policy, etc. We live in a technological world. Everything we do is dependent on technology; from the food we eat, the water we drink, the disposal of our wastes, our transportation, our jobs, our livelihood. We can make some choices as to how and what technologies we wish to embrace. We can choose to watch TV and be brainwashed by the 24/7 “news” channels, or not. We can grow some of our own food, walk to where we want to go, sing or play music for our entertainment; but we cannot slip into a world of self-sufficiency.
So here are some of my thoughts of this technological disaster in the Gulf. I/we are all part of it because we use petroleum products. This mandates the drilling in the Gulf, as well as other hostile and difficult areas; because we need the product. It doesn’t make any difference that the majority of the oil we extract from our leases in the Gulf are exported. We get our gasoline from a global bathtub which is worth billions and billions of dollars to oil industry, and comes from all over the globe. Until we reduce our demand and eventually replace it with other fuels, oil will continue to be extracted from even more far out corners of the earth, employing more difficult technologies, and creating potentially more devastating problems. What if this leak occurred in the icy plains of the Arctic?
BP is one of the largest corporations in the world, with access to state of the art technologies for oil drilling. They employ some of the brightest talent in the field for exploration, extraction, refining, and getting the product to the consumer. They spend millions along with all the other companies claiming they can produce oil and, at the same time, protect the environment. Do they lie? Probably not. I would hope they have good intentions on their own, beyond what they are forced to do through regulations and quality assurance procedures. So what happened? Technological error? Bad valve? Depleted battery? Improper concrete seal? Human error? Lax regulators and inspectors? Bribes? Deliberate sabotage? Who knows; it is probably a combination of many of these factors. Eventually the pointing fingers might figure it out. The main argument now is that accidents DO happen, regardless of how smug we are in saying that we know what we are doing. Most of us drive cars; we strive to be safe drivers…how many of you have been in a fender bender, in spite of how careful you thought you were. There are risks with everything we do. We have control over some risks, for example, we can choose not to drive, or take safer routes to reduce our risk. But with most large technologies, we are subject to risks we cannot avoid, and the consequences can be far reaching.
Most of you who know me, won’t be surprised that I now bring up the subject of nuclear power! Now, here is a humongous technology with an equally humongous risk; a risk that none of us can avoid. I, along with many others both critical and supportive of nuclear power, believe that we will eventually suffer a serious “accident” at a nuclear power station, in which there will be a release of radiation creating an unimaginable disaster of greater magnitude than the Gulf leak. In spite of the industry’s promise that they know everything and have thought of everything possible to prevent such an accident…s..t will happen! The difference here is that radiation is invisible; not like the oily slick and gobs that we see in the Gulf. The explosion at Chernobyl twenty-five years ago is reminiscent of what we saw occur in the Gulf. The initial corporate response was denial, then admittance of a situation that was not a big problem, then disclosure of under-estimated volumes of leaking oil, then finger pointing, then botched technological attempts to fix the problem, then legal attempts to maximize dollar liability, then admission of a more severe problem, then…… They didn’t/don’t have a clue as to what they are really doing; hiding behind the corporate and media disinformation and PR greenwashing. With Chernobyl, the International Nuclear Agency in Europe downplayed the significance of the accident, and years later continues to promote false information as to how humans and the environment were effected. A recently released book by the NY Academy of Sciences reveals previously unpublished Russian data that postulates over one million people have die from the radiation release at Chernobyl. Similar white-washes have occurred in the US following Three Mile Island; a new study on radiation effects around US nuclear power plants may shed light on what the human health impact was due to that accident. Big oil and nuclear power are controlled by very big and powerful corporations, who will say whatever they want and spread that information via the media which they own.
The bottom line, which I have held and spouted forth so many times is that we have so many options to “drill, baby, drill” and “glow, baby, glow.” The corporations that control the trillion dollar energy economy resent the fact that they cannot own and control the sun, the wind, the oceans, the millions of small independent power producers who can wean us off of oil and other fossil fuels, and lead us to a safer, saner, sustainable energy future.
More on this later. But for now check out a short little video put out by one of my mentors, Amory Lovins and the Rocky Mountain Institute called "Reinventing Fire."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8H2jnmJ6ZEw
