By Frank Peterman
Intuitively, every thinking American knows the Gulf Oil Spill was possible because it happened several times before and will happen as long as we drill for oil. And yet we sit around blaming the President, Congress, BP and anyone else we can for this predictable disaster. BP and theoil industry is doing exactly what we PAY them to do: provide us with more oil. Our response reminds me of the statement of the comic book character Pogo: “We have met the enemy and he is us!”
In the minds of most of us, acquiring adequate oil supplies to fuel our consumerism is a technical problem capable of a technical solution: drill for more oil. We have been led to believe that anytime we are faced with a problem of supply, all we need do is find more. We therefore refuse to look at the consumption end of the scale as a possible solution, since this allows us to avoid any responsibility for our crisis. This is irresponsible conduct especially in the face of the fact that oil supplies are finite, population is increasing and the earth is warming.
The real problem in reality is oil consumption, which is an adaptive problem requiring a change in life style for there to be any lasting solution. All the environmental organizations, the conservation organizations, the human rights organizations and governments need to get on one message: conserve, preserve and protect for future generations. Use less so we all can have more. We can do more in a year with a successful conservation campaign than with decades of new inventions.
Dilemma
We have a three pronged dilemma:
1. We refuse to give up the comforts of our lifestyle.
2. We continue to drill.
3. We default to the technical solutions of wind, wave and solar.
I’ve mentioned 1 and 2 above, and 3 is also a technical solution that we hear is our energy salvation.
But a few sobering facts: The mechanisms that allow us to use these technologies are built using fossil fuels. So as we manufacture wind turbines, solar panels and wave motion machines, we simultaneously heat up the atmosphere with more greenhouse gases.
The technologies that make these devices work have not found effective methods to store energy not being used. A gallon of gas is 100 times more effective in storing energy that any battery of similar volume. And the sun doesn’t shine all day every day anywhere, nor is the wind a constant source.
Tipping Point
The problem in a nutshell is; what is the tipping point where we have produced enough of these technologies to stop the warming of the atmosphere? Being neither an engineer nor scientist, I will venture to say we are decades away and we don’t have that long because of the rapid landscape changes we are already seeing with climate change. Mind you, we have not even mentioned when these technologies will actually reverse greenhouse effects.
Finally I refuse to be critical without offering an approach that might address the problem in a meaningful way. Conservationists, environmentalists, and everyday citizens like you and I keep looking for the “magic bullet” to our oil dilemma. Yet a significant part of the answer is right before us: reverse engineering. That is, look at how we got into this mess and work our way back out of it.
I just want to say, “Right on, my brother! Right on!”
Ms. Beautiful Audrey, thank you so much for saying it eloquently!
I totally agree! It is US (you and I) that should reflect on the TRUE cause of this crisis! I welcome the President to start using the National Debit Card to help pay for this problem, heck, we caused it!
Also, Frank, thank you for using language that speaks to the scope and nature of this problem; this is NOT a “spill” but yet a torrent of gushing crude oil and natural gas! To continue to consider this a “spill” or a “leak” is, at best, intellectually dishonest.
While we’re on the subject of the Gulf Gusher: why haven’t we started to deal, honestly, with fallacy of dispersant usage as a way to “fight” this crisis? When I was a child, I would hide my dirty clothes, trash, used bottles etc under my bed; in the morning I would wake up to a huge pill of junk in the middle of my floor, (complements of my mother’s stealth-like, midnight cleaning audits!) The point of the story: Hiding one’s clothes under the bed, doesn’t make the problem go away, so why do we think dispersant usage is an acceptable means of “oil clean up?”
Approximately 1.26 million gallons of total dispersant have been deployed—833,000 on the surface and 382,000 subsea. More than 529,000 gallons are available.
My God, My God!
I say that in supplication, calling in the name of God with whom I AM One, for divine intervention.
Our first issue of Pickup & GO! in 2005, after the tsunami had claimed more than a quarter of a million lives, the head of the IPPC, Rahjendra Pachaur, the foremost climate scientist in the world, issued a warning. I remember it because he sounded frantic, which is uncharacteristic of scientists.
He said, to paraphrase, “Because of inertia built into the Earth’s rotation, we are now reaping the effects only of the pollution we put out up to the 60s. We have yet to see that from the 70s, 80s and 90s. He called for an immediate change in our relationship to the Earth, adding, “we have only a small window of opportunity, and it is closing fast.”
Have you noticed that the Weather Channel has become the news station? weather is the story. If this were the very last day that we were on Planet Earth, and had to give an account for our lives, wouldn’t we want to wake up and say, “We turned our whole society around collectively after the Gulf horror. And now we and our descendants will reap the benefit of a clean, healthful environment…
So, we’ve got to find a way to universalize a comprehensive CONSERVATION & ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE modus operandi!
Curious question regarding the salt water to fresh water conversion facilities on Florida’s west coast (Tampa, etc.) – How do those facilities process oil contaminated sea water? And along the same lines, are there nukelear power plant cooling facilities that could be subject to the same concerns?
Sid, I don’t know the answers to those questions, so i will forward them respectively to the EPA, the South Florida Water Management District, and the US Army Corps of Engineers, with the request that they respond to this blog. Let’s see if the power really resides with the people, or if the civil servants we pay choose to ignore the people…
No word yet from the powers that be, though i emailed them yesterday and copied Sid and Al.
Looking at the photos of the water burning, billowing black smoke pulsing into the sky, fish leaping out of the boiling water, i can only think, “we have precipitated the armageddon that so many in our society have been waiting for.” Unbelievable! Quantum physics says we get what we focus on, since we’re making up the whole thing as we go along..
Monday, June 21, the start of summer, and the day our daughter # 1 marries the man of her dreams..who comes with two wonderful children…thank you, God! Meanwhile, oil continues to gush from the bowels of the ocean floor, unchecked, uncollected. I find that many people i talk with are quick to rush President Obama’s defense – as in, well, what can he do?! He is the President, for Gosh’s sake!!! The only measure of success is: 1. Are we filling in the chasm BP et al created in the ocean floor? NO?! Then 2. Are we using every measure at our disposal to collect as much of the oil as humanly possible?! NO?! Then everything else is FAILURE, and we are accelerating the devastation of the world environment – contrary to popular lingo, this is neither an oil “spill” nor a “Gulf” disaster! Come on, people!!