After 50 days of watching BP's pathetic failure to stop the oil from gushing and hearing stories of more corruption, cronyism and incompetence, I still don't get it.
Why are we giving oil companies a free pass to drill a mile below the ocean's surface, where the pressure is so intense it causes oil to shoot out like a rocket, when we don't know how to fix major leaks? This spill stains the entire industry so why aren't other oil companies like Exxon Mobil using their record profits to help stop this catastrophe? Or to develop cutting-edge ways to clean up oil spills when they inevitably happen? And why are Valero and other Texas oil giants paying millions to try to dismantle California's clean energy policies rather than putting money towards long-term clean energy solutions?
BP is responsible for this disaster -- there's no doubt about that. But they had partners. Why haven't more heads rolled at the Minerals Management Service, where our officials have cozied up with oil executives for over a decade? (I bet they forgot to discuss giant oil spills in all of Cheney's secret energy meetings.) How has only one person been fired, while the other 1,700 MMS employees -- the same people who let BP bypass safety tests - are still in their jobs and have approved over 30 new drilling projects since the Deepwater Horizon sank? And some of these new wells will be in waters even deeper and more dangerous than the Deepwater Horizon! Do you find that as outrageous as I do?
Why are we using dismal and inadequate boom technologies from the 60's to try to stop the biggest oil slick in U.S. history from suffocating our coastlines? With all the billions of dollars that have been poured into new 21st century drilling technologies, are absorbent pads really the best we can do? Really? Where are Shell's ideas, or Chevron's?
Why have one million gallons of toxic chemical dispersants been poured into the Gulf when we don't know the full effects on marine animals and plant life? And what about the cleanup workers who are getting sick? Lots of these were fishermen hired by BP to clean up the same disaster that already robbed them of their livelihoods. Now they're breathing in toxic fumes -- do we really need to kick them when they're down?
What will happen when the fisheries in the Gulf reopen and we start ingesting fish that have been swimming through plumes of oil? How many dead birds, fish and mammals, covered in grease, have sunk to the bottom of the sea where they won't be counted as part of the death toll of this disaster?
We have lost over 30 million gallons of American oil, so why is no one standing up telling us all to conserve? Even if this gusher is just a drop in the bucket in terms of the global market, that doesn't change the fact that oil is a resource that won't come back once it's gone. We are using petroleum at breakneck speed -- in our cars, our planes, our lawn mowers, and even our plastic bags and water bottles. So where's the movement to fast-track a high speed rail system (like China has), or ban plastic bags, or stop us from idling our cars while we wait to pick our up our kids at school?
As we together watch the horrors unfolding in the Gulf, why haven't Republicans reached across the aisle to help our government get America off its filthy oil addiction?
In 2005, Katrina helped us realize that we can't afford to let global warming continue unabated. Yet Congress is still dragging its feet. Scientists and the public know that climate change is happening, and the impacts are only going to get worse.
What will happen when two catastrophes in one region meet, with this year's predicted horrible hurricane season soon hitting oily waters?
How many more disasters will we allow before we make the switch from dirty, polluting fuels to safe, clean energy sources that won't run out?
Robert Redford has it right. Our dependence on oil is bad for our health and it's bad for our country. We need the Senate to act before it's too late.
Even once the hole is plugged, the grease will never completely be cleaned up -- we're still finding oil from the Exxon Valdez spill! We can't lose sight of a better future and what it takes to get there. With President Obama's support, the Senate must pass tough climate and clean energy legislation THIS YEAR that makes the polluters pay, really moves us beyond petroleum and paves the way for the clean energy economy.
We are all heartsick watching the tragedy in the Gulf unfold. Our children deserve a healthier, safer future -- one that's not slicked with oil.
It's time for the Senate to give us something to be hopeful about.
Tell your senators to pass climate and clean energy legislation, and learn more about the Gulf oil disaster at www.nrdc.org/cleanenergynow.
Drive less
Drive slower to conserve fuel
Take mass transit
Call for light rail systems in your communities
Walk when at all possible (it's good exercise as well)
Bicycle
Work in your communities for clean energy
Write to you state legislatures to support clean energy because on the whole it has been states that have been moving faster and doing more on this.
Call for an end to the fossil fuel intensive agricultural model the US and the world uses that could save not only on fossil fuels bbut approx.39% in carbon emissions
See, that wasn't hard, was it?
And you don't why this is happening? Really? And maybe your mistake is looking to the Senate to give us what can only be gotten by a paradigm moral shift in humanity. What needs to be done goes far beyond the Senate in Washington DC. You can legislate until you are blue in the face but without the moral will to enforce it or to adhere to it you have nothing. Anyone with a higher consciousness understands that.
As one of your neighbors in Martha's Vineyard, practice what you preach regarding the ozone layer with your gas guzzler cars.
What we have to realize is that corporations are not the foundation of our nation. - WE ARE!!!
But when corporations can even legally buy politicians to act in their interest instead of ours the politicians line up to have their pockets stuffed witzh money WE WORKED FOR!!!
In my eyes a politician swearing to serve the people only to then go and do the opposite is a traitor. And we should start treating them as such.
Big il got all the rights they have from parasitic, lying criminals like Cheney. The fact that Obama did not throw that guy together with his allies in jail the day he took office is a sure sign he stands for betraying us. For getting away with massmurder, warmongering, destroying lives and livelihoods and making the people pay for it instead of punishing the criminals. Accountability seems - as so many other things . to work only if the people have to answer. As soon as You become a criminal of Cheney's and others' voracity You not only get away with it, You get profit out of it.
Ans as long as that does not change the criminals will only grow bolder.
I certainly agree with you on your #1 premise and have asked this myself many times in the past month - how can we have been drilling off shore for so many years without anyone having come up with a real plan for what to do if a disaster like this happened? Maybe, as one poster below explains, it's because the oil companies believed they would only be held to the $75M cap, thus any real preventive measures were ignored.
That said, I would add my 2 cents about the other things you "don't understand":
- Exxon et al is not about to help out BP any more than Ford would rush in to help GM if Chevies started exploding. Other oil companies are waiting on BP to collapse so they can grab up their leases and equipment for pennies on the dollar.
- 30 million gallons of oil is only about 7 HOURS of this country's typical usage - thus no one has asked us to conserve. (Take that for what you will)
- While I agree about the dangers of deep sea drilling, let's not just say we ALLOW oil companies to drill there - we MAKE them do it by disallowing drilling on land. Had this same explosion occurred on land (if it even could have), it would have been capped in a few days, or even hours.
the massive con job that someone must do your thinking for you, and your actions for you, has left us virtually frozen in cement.
there is only one way people will survive. they must take responsibility for every single action they do, or do not do. only then can people become mature enough to dialogue and practice dialectic with each other, and work together, compromise, sacrifice, share, go without, but always together.
the common people could shut down every government and every corporation in the world in 48 hours if they wanted to. there are just too many bodies, and too many bodies still operate most of the bells and whistles managed by governments and corporations.
soldiers are citizens. they will not act in hostility, en masse, against other citizens.
if we believe we can do nothing, we can do nothing.
it was never a good idea to trust the king, or the warlord, or the gang leader, or the politician, or the religious leader, or the bully, to act in anyone else's best interests.
why would you want someone you cannot look in the eye, every day, across the fence, or the table, or the desk, or the bed, or the playground, to do for you what you can do for yourself?
this is the beginning of sharing, and cooperating, and giving, without expectation of return.
this is the only way it will work. it starts with loving your mother, the earth.
This is the problem with the left. They like to use terms like , "We need to do something"...yeah, like what?
Or they say, WE NEED TO STOP OUR DEPENDANCE ON OIL!!! Yeah, and use what instead?
Solar panals? Wind? We've known about that for 40 years. And even if they were used to there maximum efficiency, it wouldn't provide enough energy to run the entire country, so let's try and stay in reality land for a moment.
How about a simpler approach? How about making sure the operations are run properly and safely. BP has a history of screw ups, yet Obama became their mouthpiece for the safety of off shore drilling. Millions of dollar in contributions probably helped that along.
And now it's OUR fault for using the energy source that has been provided?!!!
reality land? simpler approach? you simply are not well informed enough to say these things.
and use what instead? how about your feet, on the ground, or a bike, or to walk to the bus, or the metro, or your friend's car, or a train, or maybe to walk to your light switch and turn it off, and all the other energy uses you simply keep turned on without using them. maybe walking your recyclables to the curb would help. maybe taking fewer plane rides every year would help, maybe stopping your consumption of meat products would help, maybe five hundred other things you do not even know about would help. reality land.
simpler approach. no more wars. no more bailouts. no more night games in sports. no more driving your damn cars to sporting events. no more leaving hundreds of millions of lights burning all night in office buildings. no more leaving every street light in town on full blast all night.
simpler approach. no more deep oil drilling, period. no more private oil companies, period. no more private energy or utility companies, period.
our fault. damn right, wise guy, our fault. no one escapes, not you, not me. who else's fault would it be here in faultland usa?
oh, the left. mmm, not quite.
As for plane rides, I hate flying. Tell it to Al Gore.
And as for the "no more wars" dude, get off the soapbox. Your position is not that unique. Try to contribute something worthwhile, not 1960's slogans and poster catch phrases.
Given enough oil, they figure they can fight wars over other resources, even water. But transitioning from a civilization based as you describe upon dirt cheap petroleum products to one which has no equivalently cheap and versatile energy fuel...that is what they cannot conceive except as worldwide chaos, revolution, and apocalyptic misery.
So, not being able to conceive the political and social transition out of the box canyon they're leading us into, they convince themselves they can just dig their way through.
i don' agree with you that we don' get what they supposedly know. i question that they accurately know anything of real consequence about sustainable living or how to get there. europe has paid more than double the price of fuel here for decades. europe has 2.5 times the people of the usa. they drive a lot too, but with diesel cars half our size, at much lower average speeds. they live in dwellings that are heated less than ours, and cooled less than ours. they walk a lot more, they take trains and buses a lot more, they stay at home or travel less far than we do.
and they aren't trying any harder than we are right now. they just do it better. europe probably saves a couple hundred million barrels of oil a year, if not more, just by using roundabouts at intersections instead of streetlights. and they turn most of their lights off at night, or when they leave a room. and they use fewer lights, with dimmer bulbs. they don't work in the middle of the day.
these are just the simplest of things, but they work. and they don't send huge militaries all over the world raising hell and creating chaos.
Not what I said. What I said was that they know that THEY have nothing in their power or interest that they think is better for THEM than just sticking to what we're doing. I don't mean to pour cold water on better hopes. However I DO think we have grossly underestimated what it is actually going to take over here. If you don't hope for changes of social order and consciousness, as the military and industry WON'T, you get a bleak picture and I bet they have seen it.
Oh, and the point about the pressure is well taken except that if the hole were only five feet deep in the sea floor it wouldn't be squirting out at all because the pressure at the sea floor wouldn't differ from what's in the hole enough to matter.
George W Bush is from a Texas oil family. In Texas oil and cattle are king. His plan was to reduce or eliminate regulations that were supposed to be constricting business. He said "Get big government off the back of business and business will regulate itself." The Bush administration eliminated the professional and career employees in cabinet positions and replaced them with political appointees from industry. The new appointees were charged with enforcing regulations with which they were ideologically opposed. The recent scandal in Minerals Management showed the contempt and blatant disregard the appointees had for regulations. There's a reason the head of Minerals Management resigned without notice last month. Over fifty million voters agreed with George W that reducing regulations was a good thing.
Now tens of millions of American voters want more of the same and support candidates who agree that reducing regulations and eliminating pesky federal departments like the Environmental Protection Agency and those annoying Departments of Education and Health and Human Services is an admirable goal. "Get big government off the back of business and business will regulate itself."