Matt Simmons scares me. Not that he's a frightening man, he's not, in fact, he's a perfectly benign looking retired oil man. For the life of me I couldn't tell you exactly what he, or his firm Simmons & Company International does, save to say it involves oil and lots of money. In any event, his knowledge of the industry through more than four decades of being in it is unquestionable.
And that's what scares me. I've spoken to Matt a few times now. Most recently was last week, the week of May 24th. I was playing an excerpt from the "Dylan Ratigan" show on MSNBC on my daily syndicated radio show and the assertions were so shocking about the oil spill in the Gulf that I had to do something never before done on my show: call a former guest unannounced, without going through channels, just rang him up at home and asked him to go on in the next break. He graciously did.
It was then he told me that Top Kill would not work. It was then he told me that he believed we were all watching the wrong leak, that the major leak had to be seven miles away. He was led to that belief not by a trail of bread crumbs but the "orangish sludge" that "leads a path" directly to the oil platform and plumes of oil.
He told me BP was criminally underestimating the amount of oil they were spewing from their volcano undersea and that in reality, if the relief wells did not work, this could spew for up to 9000 days. He likened hurricane season to taking "a damp mop and swabbing the entire Gulf Region, not just coastal but inland, with it soaked in oil."
He told me the worst was yet to come.
A few days later, I believe him and it scares me.
So much is wrong with what is going on in the Gulf. But the biggest problem is our lack of outrage coupled with our lack of action, real action. We, the People are sitting by and watching something unfold that will kill animals and livelihoods, wetlands and coastal islands forever and for years to come and we refuse to sacrifice.
Because we need to shut down all offshore drilling period, end of story, today. Turn off the spigots, shut them down, cap them off and be thankful they never had a tragedy. We now see that BP has lied about so much, which means every oil company has. It simply does. The industry and the government are not ready for worse case scenarios, and just one can kill so much, so many, for so long, it's simply not worth it. We get 1/3 our oil from our own drilling, we must stop right away.
If that makes gas $6 a gallon, so be it, that's the price of being unprepared. If that means towns or industries have blackouts or regulations on use of power, so be it, that's the price for killing countless echo systems out of nothing more than greed and a need for the energy drug of choice, crude.
We have done this by turning our backs on our drug dealers. It's as if our meth was poisoned and now we're blaming the dealer for it. BP is just a drug dealer. We're the addicts.
Shut down BP America immediately. In this country corporations are people, ask the Supreme Court. People get arrested for doing these things and then lying about them. Take their assets and clean up and change things up. Solar everything everywhere now; Every building's owner must put solar on the building immediately, every city, state and county building, every building that can, must. Now, not in 10 years, now.
100 MPG cars in the next three years. Affordable one. Period, end of story, no more playing around. On my iPad for the longest time when I launched the CNN News App and went to the Live Video of the BP Oil spill stream, a Lexus ad appeared right before the video. No lie. Before you watch the oil leak, look at this gas guzzling abomination that gets a wholloping 30 mpg. Woo friggin' hooo. 100 MPG now.
In India, Mr. Tata decided Indians needed cars for under $2000. He created the Tata and it's a sensation. In America we need 100 MPG cars under $10,000 and that's that. Do whatever you must, private industry and government, but make it happen.
Because we need to shut off every well, every where, in every sea that we can. It's just that simply. Even the better prepared European countries that have even more "safeguards" than we do cannot protect us from what they cannot foresee and no one is all knowing. Accidents happen and when these accidents happen the planet, THE PLANET dies in small pieces. This time, not so small.
Why are you not completely over oil now? Why do you not see your low mileage cars as instruments of our own destruction? They are. They simply are. Why is everyone not talking about Solar, wind, geothermal, fuel cell and every other thing we have right now as an alternative right now because we're shutting off the wells right now?
Notice I didn't say nuclear. Because as the BP Gulf fills the news, the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Plant is showing why nuclear is OLD technology that we should have already had and be moving away from, not gravitating towards. There are radioactive fish that have pulled from the Connecticut River. The same plant scrambled due to a problem last week. And they also found a leak, yes, a leak, one they say was fine, they fixed it. Tell that to the fish.
The people that run nuclear plants are the same people that do, have or will run oil companies. And we've seen how trustworthy they are. We must not pursue another form of energy where a mistake ends up in, well, Chernobyl. There is no such thing as a sun spill, a wind spill, a tidal spill...get the point. Greed breeds these kinds of things and they'll always be greed in energy so long as we don't socialize it. So, we must take the danger out of it.
The fact that the USA is not prepared for a worst case disaster on a military or governmental level shows that we are not prepared for attacks on all fronts, including environmental. The crimes and oversights that have happened will be discussed, committeed and prosecuted to the nth degree. But the real responsibility is ours. And we need to own it.
We need to demand right now all the spigots get shut off. We need to send the message that the future is now and we have to replace that energy, immediately. Not in 10 years. Now. Get the various industries tooled up and going now to make America work, and hum to a new power source. Our power source, power we make and own and power that won't kill us if it escapes.
We need to build this future now, because as of this moment, we have proven oil can, and will, be the death of us.
(And for the record, I wrote this on my iMac plugged in to my wall. My wall which gets it's power from the 8k Solar System on my roof, which, thanks to nice weather, has provided all the energy I've needed to write this and listen to Ed Shultz on the Sonos WiFi).
Follow Charles Karel Bouley on Twitter: www.twitter.com/talkradiolive
BP's PR ads are not impressing me, and with the situation changing on a daily basis, those ads already look like phony boilerplate.
Two years ago, I gave us only twenty years to get off the oil standard for private transportation. I considered deep-water drilling a last resort that, if done too soon and too much, would simply enable procrastination while using up the reserves we are going to need later.
Even now, with the cap in place and siphoning part of the leakage, they are referring to what they keep out of the water as "production". Will this well ever produce enough profit to pay for it's cost to the environment and the livelihoods of tens of thousands - perhaps millions?
What about the cars that run on water? What happened to that?
We will take our share of the responsibility. But addicts? I think not.
We are absolutely on board with no more utility bills and no more gas stations. Let's have free energy now. Solar, wind, tidal, geothermal, zero-point, cold fusion, over-unity, I don't care. Who knows how to do it? Who can help us get these things done?
Because you are right. This has to be our "no more" moment. At the absolute minimum we must decide never again to drill offshore for oil, and we must shut them all down. Period.
So, let's get on with it. I don't think I'm the only one who is ready for more choices. And I can't imagine gas prices are going to get too much lower.
All this is nothing compared to the changes we've made to reduce home energy consumption, so that the lousy 3% of the world's natural gas reserves that we have here in the U.S. will go a little further. Even our e-mail and web site are through a solar powered provider.
I don't mention all this much because it too often makes me a hated goody-goody. I'm not even nearly as far out there as some others. Our life style saves us a ton of money and we are statistically better off than the vast majority, which is not saying much, but time with friends is far more valuable than shopping and flaunting. I used to spend money to help the economy, but not since it was rigged so that half the money goes to Asia and transportation. I'm totally disgusted that corporate America just hounds us to buy more.
http://www.blacklightpower.com/
BlackLight Power, Inc. is the inventor of a new primary energy source with applications to heating, distributed and central power generation, and motive power. It is based on a new chemical process of releasing the latent energy of the hydrogen atom, the BlackLight Process, with the formation of a prior undiscovered form of hydrogen called "hydrino."
I'm sorry, but this is simply not realistic. LIke it or not, the world is currently powered by fossil fuels. While it's essential to develop renewable energy sources like solar and wind and biofuels, it's also important to recognize that none of these technologies, alone or combined, can come close to replacing oil (not to mention coal) any time soon. We may be "addicted" to oil, but it's not something the world can just choose to give up, cold turkey. Bouley may power his laptop with solar, but what about his car, heating? Does he fly? None of this is possible without oil, and lots of it. In the long run we'll need to find replacements for this finite resource, but it won't happen overnight.
http://www.blacklightpower.com/
Apparently they are currently modifying/adapting their "power from water" technology to run automobiles as well as producing electricity for the 'grid' ... The technology is right there! Just have to want to use it...
I just ran across this company I noticed something about autos but did not investigate.
Moodys, the rating agency, is a disgrace. When things were good they gave everybody AAA ratings. After things were getting bad they finally lowered a bunch of ratings--which only mad the recession worse.
A new ratings company has formed; spent over a year organizing it. They lined up state retirement funds and union pension funds who agreed to pay for real ratings; they got investors and started the company...
Why can't a group of investors contract for these Hydrino engines and buy some frames and sell cars. We the people need to start making some cars ourselves if BP and Exxon have Ford and GM by their short hairs.
Is there more demand for realistic ratings than for cars that run on "Hydrino"? The answer is obviously yes, it is apparently too easy to keep buying cars from the existing car companies and buying gas from the oil companies.
If WE want cars that don't run on oil WE should get it done.
I'm pissed at the oil companies and I'm pissed at the car companies and I'm pissed at 'we the people". I am ready to go to NJ to see this engine, I am ready to start pre-selling the car, I am willing to talk to investors and raise funding ...
That's the attitude WE Americans need to have.
Shut down BP in America? Shut off every well, every where, in every sea that we can? Who's we? It's NOT just that simple, I believe thats what you meant.. How about shut this huge incompetent government, a bottomless pit of greed. Industry is real people, their worth is creating jobs, livelyhood and not to forget energy, millions of value added products. In the areas of energy, economics and the culture of modern man, ignorance prevails! Fact, the foreseeable future is oil and natural gas and it will continue to run the whole FLIPPIN WORLD!
One thing right in this article is the title. BP is NOT the only villian here. Look in the mirror... You're all hypocites!
The oil companies are huge, bottomless pits of greed, there is no question about that. But they are able to get away with it because they are responding to our needs.
We need to look in the mirror and set another plan for the future.
http://graciouslivingdaybyday.com/
In the end we blame ourselves every time when something goes wrong when in fact we had no say so in it. Same with the food industry or anything else you can come up with, the government sets the standards and they are all beholden to the corporations. No one is looking out for the consumer, not even the FDA! Give us well functioning mass transit like Europe has but then some make the argument that we are just too big, but hey, let us start and it will give people back some jobs. Just where is our "can do attitude?"
But concerning choices, I think every one of us as inidivduals have the power to make choices in our own lives, no? I gotta tell ya, I live in what is arguably car-driving central, Los Angeles. I haven't driven a car in over two years. The mass transit in this city is substandard. I hate taking the bus. I so miss my hot little sports car. Did I mention that I hate taking the bus? But my dislike for riding the bus is eclipsed and dwarfed 1000x by my dislike for vile oil corps.