I’ve been watching the live feed of the Gulf Oil leak with dread and loathing:
It strikes me as odd that we’re all up in arms about the Gulf Oil Leak (which on the low side is dumping 5,000 barrels a day into the Gulf) but we consume, burn and convert 18 million barrels of oil a day, much of which ends up in our atmosphere. Don’t get me wrong, this is an environmental catastrophe any way you look at it, but look around, everyone is still driving and we’re still consuming oil.
Which is why we’re drilling for it in in such hard-to-reach places in the first place.
In any other context, an oil blow out or gusher is cause for celebration, a sign of abundance and plenty, a symbol of successful resource exploitation. Not so much here. It’s like the Earth is saying, “Here, you want some oil? I got some oil for yas.”
Electric and/or hydrogen fuel cell cars are the way to go. While millions of electric cars won’t exactly solve traffic and congestion issues (and have their own issues with batteries), they’ll at least move us in the direction of reducing our oil consumption so that, eventually, we won’t have to drill for oil 5,000 feet below the surface of the sea.
And if, by some developmental and policy miracle, we can power those vehicles with electricity produced by solar panels or wind farms (like Tehachapi, whose controversial lines snake through the SCV), we will have arrived.
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