Yesterday was the 50th day of the oil crisis. Fifty days of increasingly horrifying images of oil slicked pelicans, tarred beaches and terrified communities. Sadly, it seems clear that cleanup from this crisis is going to continue for a very long time.
When we look back at this summer two years from now or even ten years from now will this horrific oil disaster be remembered as a breakthrough moment that heralded in change, or will the country have gone right back to our dirty and dangerous addiction to oil?
Thomas Friedman put it perfectly in a May 28 New York Times column:
"[President Obama's] most important job, though, is one he has yet to take on: shaping the long-term public reaction to the spill so that we can use it to generate the political will to break our addiction to oil."
At this point, many in the environmental movement have pivoted from talking about the problems of offshore drilling, which have become all too obvious, to the urgency for a transition away from dirty energy.
Carl Safina of the Blue Ocean Institute may have said it best in his June 4th interview with PBS:
"This is Big Oil's Chernobyl. I think it's a catastrophe that shows the enormous risk this industry poses to public health, and to the health of communities... Ever since we've lived in caves, every time we want energy we light something on fire. We're still doing that. I think it's time for us to get out of our caves and use the clean, eternal, renewable energy."Even President Obama said it recently: "The time has come, once and for all, for this nation to fully embrace a clean-energy future." I do believe that this crisis could be the moment when the country collectively realizes that our energy future needs to be and can be rewritten. But I also believe that we are at a crossroads. We have all seen the way crises are dealt with in this country; what can be the hottest front-page story for several months can fade from political view even before companies make good on their promises to communities or before politicians make their rhetorical commitments into reality. I don't think it's too early to wonder if when the media frenzy settles and the gusher is plugged this oil crisis will fade from political view? Or, will this be the beginning of the end for big oil's slimy influence on our energy future?
Many have compared the transition to a clean energy future to landing a man on the moon. Most recently Bill McKibben of 350.org and Michael Brune of the Sierra Club have both called on President Obama to turn this crisis into a leadership moment modeled on JFK's 1961 address to Congress urging America to pledge itself to the goal of reaching the moon.
This could be a paradigm-shifting moment for our country, but many crises come with that opportunity. For my part, I think the first step to ending our addiction to oil is for the country to believe we can. When JFK pledged to land a man on the moon it wasn't because he knew how we were going to it, it was because he believed we could. Similarly, in our own lives transformative change rarely happens until we believe it's possible.
For some reason, it is easier for us as a country to believe that the ocean's will rise and the climate will be irrevocably changed than it is for us to believe that 20 years from now we could be transitioning away from our addiction to oil.
We have all in this country, especially those working inside the beltway, become too realistic, even feeble, in our estimations of what is politically possible. President Obama and his constituents, us, need to dare to be optimists even now if we want to see a game-change on energy.
James Moore: A Requiem for the Gulf
No one can deny the Gulf has been altered in a manner that will affect it for generations and recovery is not a certainty. No more knowledge is needed to understand this catastrophe. Death expands with the slick.
Bob Cesca: Sarah Palin Demands Hardball Regulations and a Takeover of BP
Yes, seriously. Sarah Palin is in favor of the federal government planting its gigantic boot on the throats of energy companies. She put it in writing.
Bill McKibben: Missing the Real Drama of the Deepwater Horizon Blowout
The questions that the Gulf spill raises go well beyond: How big an idiot is Tony Hayward? The questions are more like: How out of balance with the natural world are we?
We are too addicted to oil at this point to really cut back significantly on it
Sadly, the only way we are going to change is when some actual shortage occurs of oil and thus prices rise dramatically or we just generally run out of it around the world.
A related blog post - and shameless self promotion - on one the thing we HAVE to do to get out of this mess... educate ourselves.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joe-the-nerd-ferraro/attitude-for-aptitude_b_605844.html
The Gulf gusher may have triggered a global cataclysm.
See Life Threatening Danger and Ticking Time Bomb at http://www.aesopinstitute.org
This appears to have the potential to become a worldwide emergency equivalent to global war.
If these facts are confirmed, President Obama would be wise to outline a gutsy program that, if there is still time, might avoid a tipping point and the resulting loss of untold millions of lives.
Although little known and less believed, it is possible to supersede fossil fuels faster than might be imagined. A revolution in energy is being born.
See Moving Beyond Oil and Running on Water on the same Aesop Institute website.
BlackLight Power is working with National laboratories and others to validate fractional Hydrogen. This allows a barrel of water to equal 200 barrels of oil. They state prototype generators will be demonstrated this year, which might end dismissal and ridicule from scientists. blacklightpower.com
Water as fuel for hybrid cars results from successful research at a distinguished laboratory 30 years ago. An engine achieved 70% efficiency, an all-time record. We believe they unknowingly produced fractional Hydrogen.
Magnetic generators and room temperature Ultraconductors are also moving toward production. They promise to supersede batteries, the Achilles heel of the electric car.
On a wartime footing, these and similar breakthroughs would be developed and produced on a 24/7 basis. That can be done with accelerated support.
The economic impact and job creation potential would be monumental.
http://www.ranken-energy.com/Products%20from%20Petroleum.htm
In China and India, are they sitting around moaning about their oil addiction? I doubt it. Sure we can go off oil, it is possible, but the Gulf oil will still be removed. America is not the world.
We are all complicit in this spill, and any other spill that happens (with regularity) around the globe.
The USA is 3rd in oil use per capita (Saudi Arabia is 1st, Canda 2nd).
We can't pin this tail on any other donkey.
I did not word my post the right way Lorianne, I wasn't excusing America, just telling everyone that this was BP's oil destined for the world, and not just the American market.
Thanks for the reply.
70 percent of the oil consumed in america is used for transportation.
Can the drug addict throttle back to just a little coke? A lighter hit of heroin?
I doubt it. T Boone Pickens put a very moderate plan on the table two years
ago and no one has done anything to my knowledge...except T Boone. Here's the test
case for me. America MUST put a substantial surtax on gasoline...$1/gallon-preferably more.
For starters. We cannot afford the wars. The planet cannot afford the spills. We drug
addicts can no longer afford our fix. America must go cold turkey. I already hear "Drill
Baby Drill" coming back. Its not as loud. Its couched in wimpering apologies...i.e.
"We still need oil..."
And coming from mysterious places...President Obama is reinstating and licensing drilling
in the shallower Gulf and has not stopped all drilling in the deeper Gulf. I would not have
thought that possible.
Just shows how naive I am after all these years. If we can't do the dramatic game-changing surtax, as an opener, after THIS experience, then the answer to your question is there's no hope for the addict.
Shutting down drilling on our own shores will not illiminate the environmental risks of oil drilling.
It would just make us even bigger NIMBY hypocrites than we already are.
If we're going to use the oil, we should take the risk on ourselves ... not push it to poorer countries around the globe.
1) Surtax (gas rationing?)
2) Sugar-based ethanol
3) Subsidized mass transit
4) Motor scooters/bicycles
5) NaturalGas driven trucks
6) Wind NOW...see T Boone Pickens, oilman building windfarms
7) Solar Now...tax incentives for wind/solar in the home
8) Home gardens (you'll hear more soon)
9) Hemp?
We've already sold off our industries to maintain our oil imports, we fought a war for the "oil law" in Iraq, we let Exxon get away with murder, and we've written off the Gulf of Mexico to future generations. We buy Citgo gasoline enabling purchase of Russian arms that will one day be used against the American troops we support. How long before we sell our mothers and daughters into prostitution for a gallon of hightest? I got through college with bike and hitchhiker's thumb, I COULD give up my car, the gas, and the insurance payments. I've already given up two boats.
We're addicted...but we choose...a green life or the pushermen from Exxon & British Pollution?
"I really think it is a waste of energy (no pun intended) to oppose the moratorium on drilling. You legislators really have to get on the ball up there. It's about finding alternatives to oil. It's about retraining oil industry workers to work in the green industries. And it is about developing a green energy economy in Louisiana to replace the oil economy."
Rebecca, our senators are the worst offenders when it comes to being in Big Oil's pocket. Rolling Stone Magazine named Mary Landrieu one of the 17 dirtiest offenders. But, they, and, indeed BP itself are not wholly to blame. In my article in the Examiner, I noted that we are all responsible. Our addiction to oil, to getting in the car, to consuming, consuming, consuming has led us to this point. We allowed our senators to stuff their pockets with Big Oil money, and we did not stop them when they voted against legislation that would have increased safety measures or even move to cleaner energy because we wanted the jobs now.
I am hopeful, as you are, that this crisis will open the eyes of every American and instill us with the strength to lead the world in clean energy solutions.
But, in the meantime we should shoulder the risks of drilling ourselves, not push it off to other (poorer) countries where safety regulation are even more lax than our own.
We use the oil, we should accept the risks.
Our pelicans are no more precious than their pelicans (or whatever wildlife is endangered where ever oil is drilled/refined/transported).
That's not the case now and we are no where near able to provide enough 'green' electricity to power the number of personal vehicles we have now, much less planned increases due to population increases).
Also, personal vehicles are only a fraction of our oil consumption. We need to think much more comprehensively than that.