After decades of inaction, this may be the single most important moment in America's search for clean energy. Starting with Richard Nixon, the last eight U.S. Presidents have promised to end our addiction to imported oil and develop our own domestic energy resources. We're now on the verge of unprecedented progress.
All 59 Democratic U.S. Senators met on Capitol Hill to talk about passing a climate and clean energy bill this year (the House passed one last year). Several different and bipartisan energy bills have already been unveiled in the Senate - and in some cases, already analyzed by outside experts -- so lawmakers have plenty of ideas at hand and can adopt the best aspects of the different measures. And the President is making the issue a priority -- calling the sponsors of the different bills, summoning key lawmakers to the White House, and planning a bipartisan meeting next week to move a bill through the Senate.
If we're now seeing unprecedented movement on clean energy legislation, it may be because we're also seeing unprecedented environmental damage from the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. There are plenty of reasons for fast action on clean energy -- a billion dollars a day going overseas for imported oil, millions of tons of pollution going into our air, and threats to our health. But the oil spill may be the ultimate catalyst toward action. Americans who have seen pictures of the disaster are frightened or outraged. And rightly so.
From a comfortable distance -- in our classrooms, around our water coolers, through pictures on TV or newspapers -- the BP oil disaster is depressing and horrific.
But up close where every breath you take fills your mouth, nose, and lungs with the toxic mix of oil and industrial chemicals, where you talk with resilient and proud locals and hear their frustration, anger, and concern, where the disturbing and unforgettable scenes of a precious and fragile ecosystem in crisis are just seared into your mind - all of it is just so bad, so repugnant, so wrong in the most profound way.
Two days in the Gulf of Mexico left me enraged - and deeply resolved. Both the widespread damage and the inadequacy of the response effort exceeded my worst fears.
Seeing terns and gulls sitting on the oil-soaked booms that were supposed to be protecting their fragile island marshes - booms that had been blown or washed ashore - may have been the ultimate symbol of the devastation unfolding in the Gulf.
Or maybe it was the lone shrimp trawler, aimlessly circling off the coast, dragging a saturated gauze-like boom behind it, accomplishing nearly nothing.
Or maybe it was the desperation of the fishermen whose livelihoods had been snatched away by BP's recklessness - and yet want nothing more than to see the moratorium on drilling lifted so their economies don't dry up, as well.
I'd spent a full day on the Gulf and we ended up soaked in oily water and seared by the journey into the heart of ecological darkness.
By Tuesday night, I was home. My throat burned and my head was foggy and dizzy as I showed my pictures and my flip-camera video to my wife, Fran, and my 13-year-old daughter, Nicole, on the TV in the family room.
Images of the gooey peanut-butter colored oil and the blackened wetlands flashed by. Pictures of dolphins diving into our oily wake and Brown Pelicans futilely trying to pick oil off their backs popped on the screen. And, out of nowhere, Nicole put on the music from the season finale of Glee.
With all these horrific images on the screen, she had turned on the show's final song of the year, "Somewhere Over the Rainbow." The song, a slow, sweet, ukulele and guitar-driven version, couldn't have added a deeper sense of tragic irony.
I choked up. And then that resolve kicked in: I wanted anyone/everyone to see what our addiction to oil had done to the Gulf and to contrast that with the sense of hope and possibility that "Somewhere" exudes.
Long story short, last weekend, Peter Rice, Chairman of Fox Networks Entertainment, gave Environmental Defense Fund the green light to use the song. The pictures you'll see were shot by two incredibly talented EDF staffers, Yuki Kokubo and Patrick Brown -- and a few are mine.
The inspiration was Nicole's. This is for her, and for all of our kids -- and theirs to come. And for all Americans who are now moved to act -- to call their Senators and tell them to do more to stop the spill, to clean up the Gulf, and to finally, finally, get us a clean energy bill.
David Yarnold is executive director of Environmental Defense Fund.
From the NYT:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/18/us/18whale.html?hp
"Over the last weeks, the carcasses of oily pelicans, turtles and other animals have washed to shore in the Gulf of Mexico. Now the first dead whale has been found — a juvenile sperm whale floating 77 miles from the leaking oil well.
On Tuesday, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ship spotted the 25-foot animal due south of the Deepwater Horizon site. The water the whale was floating in was not oiled."
Blair Mase, the Southeast marine mammal stranding coordinator for the oceanic agency, said that scientists were “very concerned” that oil was the cause of the whale’s death, but that the whale’s body was so decomposed and scavenged by sharks that it would be impossible to say for certain."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/18/us/politics/18spill.html?ref=us
http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2006/04/09/waas_now.html
How does the public ensure that it doesn’t end up paying for costs of the spill 20 or 30 years out?
Based on the latest estimates, for example, the daily civil fine for the escaping oil alone could be $280 million. But criminal penalties, if imposed, could cause the costs to balloon still further, said David M. Uhlmann, a law professor at the University of Michigan, who headed the environmental crimes section of the Justice Department from 2000 to 2003.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/17/opinion/17thu1.html?ref=opinion
http://www.hks.harvard.edu/presspol/prizes_lectures/goldsmith_awards/investigative_reporting.html
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/060515/15mediatakes.htm”
As an expert in oilfields in the Middle East, I offered BP the following simple technique that can instantly plug the well. Though BP admitted it can work, it wouldn't implement it because it will kill the Well.
PLUGGING BP WELL BY A STRING OF CEMENT-FILLED CASING PIPES:
{BP has to lower down the wellbore through the Blowout Preventer a string of 18" Casing Pipes connected together 500-1000 ft long after being filled with cement}- Finito!
BP Well will instantly be plugged and there will be no need for the Relief Wells. They have assortment of Casing Pipes onboard their platform in the Gulf. The annular space between the Casing Pipe String and the well walls will be filled by pumping cement. The whole operation will take few hours.
REQUEST YOUR CONGRESSMEN TO INVITE ME TO FACE BP EXECUTIVES TO IMPLEMENT THIS SOLUTION AND END THE NIGHTMARE
Eng. Hodieb Khalifa
Cairo - Egypt
hodieb_khalifa yahoo
See Moving Beyond Oil, What to Do, and other short articles at http://www.aesopinstitute.org
The best new energy science is difficult to believe, but National and independent laboratories are increasingly involved.
A barrel of ordinary water, when utilized as fractional Hydrogen, can replace 200 barrels of oil.
Hybrid engines that run on water might travel 1,000 miles on a gallon.
BlackLight Power has an extensive website describing fractional Hydrogen.
Our own work is based on a very different theoretical understanding but supports the claim regarding a barrel of water.
It began with research at a distinguished National Laboratory 30 years ago, that broke all records for engine efficiency. We believe they produced fractional Hydrogen unknowingly.
Wise government and private support can help to supersede oil faster than might be imagined.
This can sharply boost the economy, once validated by independent and National labs.
Demonstration devices will help to discourage disbelief. Every university and technical school will want several.
Round the clock development and production is characteristic of wartime. The potential of the Gulf cataclysm to produce a Global Warming tipping point requires that kind of all out approach.
The facts suggest humanity faces life threatening danger, President Obama should lead the nation with a program that maximizes the potential for survival and abundance.
The White House should move Congress, with truly excellent legislation, into a future free of all carbon based fuels. Obama needs to mobilize the nation with gutsy leadership!