The Oil Slick Tsunami

My Rant Du Jour is about the latest man made disaster, the oil slick tsunami that is slime-ing its way toward a battle weary New Orleans and Gulf Coast region. What is happening to solve that problem? Apparently not much!

This oil spewing catastrophe is a situation that British Petroleum (BP), and all other oil companies should and could have anticipated and had an action plan for. Oil rigs in US waters are not required to have remote shut off switches as they are in Norway and Brazil. Oil companies have pursuaded the US regulaors that these were unneccessary due to their enormous expense. These companies are drilling deep into the earth to remove resources (oil). If those resources get spilled into our other resource, water, there is a BIG PROBLEM. How is it that nobody now knows how to difinitively deal with this situation? In 2010, with all of our advanced technology, and with the advanced technology used on that oil rig to drill for oil, they cannot contain this spill; unbelievable! Apparently we did need the remote shut off switch capability afterall!

The Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling rig experienced a massive explosion on April 20, more than 13 days ago, and the resulting spillage of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico has continued since that moment. The extent of the damage that is being caused and will be caused is unknown at this time. The oil slick as of today is estimated at 100 square miles. The impact this will have on fishing, tourism, and wildlife in that Gulf region will be massive. Yet another disaster that the US will have to absorb financially.

Eleven crew members that worked on that rig are presumed to be dead after search efforts to find them were called off on April 23. The 115 crew members that survived took lifeboats to a supply boat sent by BP to rescue workers from the disaster.

So far, I have not heard or read a lot about speculation on the cause of the explosion. Maybe I just have not paid as much attention to that fact, I am not sure. Was it human error? Was it a mechanical failure? Was it something more sinister? I have not heard any connection to possible terrorism mentioned. Thinking about how we were all maniacs a couple of years ago when our gasoline cost over $4.00 a gallon, it strikes me that this rig could have been a possible terrorist target.

How better to get us ALL, than to hit us where it hurts and force us to pay a fortune again for gasoline. At $4.00 a gallon, it was painful at the gas pump, when paying for delivery charges, plane tickets, cruise tickets, limos, taxis, truck transportation of all goods and services. It seriously hurts our economy when gasoline is $4.00 a gallon.

Funny things happen though when gas prices skyrocket upward. We all become more selective with our driving habits...do we really NEED to go to the mall 1/2 hour away....can we carpool for soccer.....should we ditch the SUV and get a Prius.......many of these ideas occurred to us a couple of summers ago when gas was so costly. Priuses were impossible to get...there were waiting lists and people willing to pay more than sticker price for them. More people car pooled or avioded unneccessary road trips, plane trips, cruises, etc. People would pull up to the gas pump in disgust and only fill their tanks half way. For my car, 1/2 way at $4.00 a gallon cost me $40.00!! Believe me, it does make you think twice about tooling around town in your car for the fun of it!

One other aspect of this horrible situation that we are probably all thinking about is the prospect of the US opening up further areas around our coastlines for oil drilling. At the moment it does not sound like a good idea to expand our drilling program when we can't seem to recover from the problems of this drilling disaster. Sara Palin's mantra "Drill Baby Drill" seems pretty stupid at the moment. We do have short memories however and probably as soon as we clean up from this mess, the plan to expand our own drilling will resume.

We, as a country, need to be far less dependent on foreign oil. It is a political hot potato for us to have to depend on our arch enemies for the oil to run our cars, businesses, and homes. Our dependence on middle eastern countries for oil makes us have to look the other way when they blatantly violate basic tenents of human rights, and makes us weak in their eyes as well.

Instead of focusing most of our brain power on finding new domestic oil sources for the next 100 years, we need to take that down a notch and focus on newer cleaner energy sources that can be sustained indefinitely. I am not saying windmills will power us into 2100 by themselves. But lets face it, if a windmill breaks down or even breaks off and falls down, we are not going to have any natural disaster occur as a result of that failure. Neither are we going to have a disaster if a solar panel stops working or breaks down. We will just be missing the power they usually provide.

Finding alternative, CLEAN energy could be the next big thing and could be a huge boost to our economy. At this point in time, we really need a NEXT BIG THING. There would be countless jobs created, new industries would pop up, new software to be developed, new factories to produce whatever carries and dispenses that new energy. Granted, oil industry employees would suffer if a newer cleaner source of energy is found and is proven to be reliable and reasonably priced. There is no reason though that BP, Exxon Mobil, or the like can't be the ones to discover and bring to us this new energy source. They don't have to become obsolete if they don't want to.

Maybe my thinking is simplistic and there is much more involved here but it seems to me that this oil rig disaster is screaming out: "Enough is enough " and "Find a better way" to us. We need to hear that message and get serious about it.

If we continue to drill for oil, add new drilling locations, and still have to contend with pirates hijacking cargo ships carrying oil, drill rigs breaking down, ships leaking oil into the water, none of this is going to get better and it may get a lot worse. Gas could go to $10.00 a gallon and may be all over our beaches, our birds, and leave us unable to fish anywhere. We do need to find a better way and BP and the US government need to clean up the mess before it is too late for the Gulf region to recover.