From the moment the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded, the news has moved in one direction -- from bad to worse to unthinkable. Eleven workers missing and now presumed dead. First some leaking oil, then a major spill, and now what could be the worst environmental disaster in our history.
This week, I flew over the Gulf with reporters and Sierra Club activists and saw for myself the beginnings of a devastation that will be inescapable for the Gulf Coast. Can it get worse? I'm afraid it could. If the oil reaches the powerful Gulf currents, it could be carried to Florida and up the Atlantic seaboard.
Local Sierra Club volunteers (more than 2,000 of them so far!) will do what they can to help. So will the local and national governments. Even BP, assuming we don't let them shirk their responsibility, will have to contribute, though they could never write a check big enough to cover all that's been lost. We probably won't even know the full extent of the damage for decades.
I don't care how much money the oil industry pumps into lobbying ($169 million in 2009) or how many slick PR campaigns they underwrite -- this disaster should make clear to every American that the price for prolonging our dependence on oil is just too high. And that's all we're doing -- prolonging. Sooner or later, we will make the transition to clean energy. We won't have a choice.
But what if we move too slowly?
Economically, our nation would be left behind by others that were quicker to embrace the future. Environmentally, we would see more horrific disasters like the one in the Gulf, as we take greater and greater risks to feed our oil and coal addiction. Perhaps most frighteningly, we might find it too late to stop runaway climate change -- a truly global catastrophe. Why risk all that when the solutions are right in front of us?
People often don't start taking care of themselves until after a wake-up call like a non-fatal heart attack. Many a smoker who simply couldn't quit has found that a grim diagnosis becomes a sudden boost to will power.
This is our wake-up call. We need to stop the expansion of offshore drilling, immediately. We need to eliminate subsidies and giveaways to companies like BP, which made more than $5.5 billion in profits in the first quarter of 2010 alone. We need our leaders to deliver a plan to get us off oil by promoting clean-energy solutions. Solutions like efficiency and clean cars already exist, we just need the political will to implement them.
Yes, it's been bad news, and I'm afraid there will be more. But this catastrophe should also be a turning point for our nation. Already, Americans are recognizing the hollowness of cries to drill, drill, drill. Now it's time to build on that epiphany and make the case, once and for all, that dirty fuels like coal and oil belong in our past, not our future.
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Great column -- here and in the L.A. Times. I haven't read your book yet, but I plan on doing so. I was hoping I would be able to track down your e-mail address, but I can't seem to. However, this seems like one way to contact you. As I'm sure you're aware, there's currently a small, but soon what I think will be a fast-growing movement toward electric cars powered by renewable energy, including via home solar systems. I'm trying to get this movement going, both with personal action (we're going solar in three weeks, an EV to follow within the next 1 1/2 years), and with online activism -- at SolarChargedDriving.Com. Yes, there are a lot of us who are fed up with Big Oil, and Dirty Coal, and who are actually doing something about it! Look forward to reading your book.
stop wasting time and resources on fossil and nukes!
unfortunately green energy lobbyists have 1% of the money the fossils and nukes do.
So guess what we will get?
Second, with 280 million cars and light trucks on the road and current hybrid sales at 300,000 per year, it would take 800 years to replace the national fleet with hybrids/electrics. Even with a new law requiring all new vehicles to be either hybrid or electric, it would take decades to transform the US fleet. Point being, no matter how strict the new energy bills, it will be a long, long time before we are weaned off oil. In the meantime, it becomes a question of either importing (Exxon Valdez) or drilling locally (current Gulf tragedy). Either way has its negatives. So we should pursue the lessser of evils, which may be a combination of more US drilling and imports. Ignoring the fact that we will be addicted to oil for a long time will not contribute to the solution. No question, more stringent environmental controls are required for all drilling on and off shore.
These EXACT SAME COMPANIES ARE BEHIND BIG SOLAR - why would we EVER TRUST THEM???? We cannot let the halo effect of the word "solar" overrun the truth effect of the words "BP," "Chevron," "Goldman Sachs," "Shell," "GE," and "Bechtel" among other mercenaries who have a decades-long history of killing our planet for money!
The solution lies now, as always, within the built environment. It's high time Sierra Club stepped away from Big Energy greenwashing and started a sincere, concerted effort to get solar panels on every home, business, parking lot and brownfield in our urban areas, and to get efficiency ramped up a thousand times from where it is now. How many more millions of acres of healthy intact ecosystem will you support killing for Big Energy profits before you realize that is a bad idea? 2 million? 50 million? All of it?
NO BIG ENERGY OF ANY TYPE, INCLUDING BIG SOLAR - ENOUGH ALREADY!
It's time to stabilize, democratize and clean the grid, not murder more species for BP profits.
REepedia is a new site that promises to bring about a voice of common sense. You should register for their updates and follow on facebook to see how they advance. I know for certain that there are some really good options to advance the discussion coming in the next couple weeks. Also you can get to know how I really feel towards the subject, as the allowed 250 words here simply will not do... hope you will join me
To the surprise of almost everyone, inexpensive, clean alternatives could be available in a relatively short time.
See Moving Beyond Oil and Running on Water at; http://www.aesopinstitute.org to learn a bit about a couple of them.
There are more. And they are moving toward practical products in several countries.
The science is new and difficult for those trained to think inside the box to accept.
But, independent labs are increasingly involved and practical applications are en-route.
As we can see, fossil fuels threaten to sharply impact life on earth much more quickly than is generally realized.
An early hit will be oil prices, which could exceed $100 per barrel in a matter of months. That can abort economic recovery.
One barrel of ordinary water can replace 200 barrels of oil. A gallon or two might power a hybrid car 1,000 miles.
The coal mine disaster, the oil catastrophe in the Gulf, and climate change, are alarm clocks!
Time to accelerate the development of breakthrough alternatives as rapidly as is humanly possible!
A 24/7 development program is ready to be born. Accelerate the birth!
The report (TechnicalPresentation021710.pdf) on http://www.american-reporter.com/ is just a lot of rehashed publicity showing spectra results easily explained by crystal field theory. When science is not on your side (you can do a lot of fancy math and hand-jiving but Mother Nature has the last say), appeal to authority and bring out the celebrities:
"The company has assembled a formidable board of directors that include a former head of Westinghouse, a top federal nuclear energy official, ..." The American Reporter is another left-wingnut rag. Show us something from, say, National Science Foundation or the American Physical Society.
Garret Moddel from colorado.edu have debunked all this ZPE wet dreams in his paper "Assessment of proposed electromagnetic quantum vacuum energy extraction methods" (xxx.lanl.gov). Unfortunately for himself, who has a US patent “Quantum vacuum energy extraction,” Patent 7379286, he did not understand the physics of EM surface waves on Casimir tubes; thus his scheme is worthless. After exchanging a couple of emails, Moddel admitted to me that his patent
was a mistake. Sensible people becoming silly.
As I said before, I emailed Rowan. The faculty at Rowan were tight-mouthed and referred me to Black Light Power for
any discussion. They are backing away from BLP claims that they confirmed hydrinos.
I believe in the Scout's motto: be prepared. Liberal idiots (an oxymoron) are dangers to one's person ANDnation. So I check at the various moronic blogs such as HuffPost. Good to know the imbecilic views beforehand.
I fear that it is because, taken as a sum-total, the people of the U.S. are lazy, complacent,
nostalgic, and somewhat moribund.