We are now in the 36th day of a man-made environmental disaster which is fast becoming an ecological apocalypse for countless species of marine life. The ecosystems of the Gulf of Mexico cannot survive wave after wave of toxic substances hitting the beaches.
The ultimate surprise is not that it happened. Oil companies, and Democratic and Republican administrations, refuse responsibility and rejected alternatives. In this privatization of the natural world, damage to sea life is the cost of doing business. The ultimate horror is that we can't stop the oil flood, won't stop consumption of oil products and fail to admit the limits of technology.
This is a morality play writ large as environmental collapse becomes the new normal. Can we realistically look to Washington alone to protect the natural world? More permits for offshore drilling have been issued. We must look to the consequences of our own demand and consumption: the energy we use, the kind of cars we drive, the products we buy, the food we eat, and our individual impact on the natural world.
We can seize this moment. We as individuals can begin a green wave of sustainability to save the planet--and ourselves.
Global warming wouldn't exist without you.
Every year,you and your coal fired cronies can defer the nuclear solution three million people die worldwide from coal pollution and we get another year closer to the as little as ten years away civilization ending climate/peak oil/ocean acidification meltdown that will kill billions.
Your nuclear objections are all thoroughly debunked nonsense.
Three million deaths annually - reasonable insurance in your book against your fevered dreams of some kind of impossible reactor meltdown.
you sound like a troglodyte, assuming that human ingenuity is stuck.
waste of today becomes resource of tomorrow. it is already happening with landfills (methane extraction, later: metal extraction).
The only realistic path to clean energy is Generation IV nuclear power (green nukes) along with electric vehicles. Wind and solar can't generate nearly enough power to meet the demands.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_Fast_Reactor
I think the BP disaster was just one more attempt at getting through to the little pesky carbon units running amok, down there. Will they listen, will they move Beyond Petroleum? Only time will tell...
Solar, wind, geothermal, conservation, renewable clean energy.
This country went to the moon in less then a decade because a young President said "because we should". Green energy and all of the benefits that go along with it isn't an even better reason then "to beat the communists"? Do we need to make clean energy less about clean and more about who we buy our oil from a bigger part of the argument?