This morning, a series of articles were published in newspapers and around the Internet. They suggested that Earth Day doesn’t have the same relevance it did when it began. Back then, the Cuyahoga River in Ohio was so polluted that it caught on fire. It’s not like we have anything like that going on any more, right?
It’s not like the water catches fire anywhere anymore, so what’s the point of Earth Day?
Ahem. Psst. Look to the right, please.
For 36 hours in the Gulf of Mexico, the water has been on fire around the Deepwater Horizon, an oil rig that exploded Tuesday night. The photograph you see here is of that fire, which could be seen 70 miles away it was so bright. Approaching at night, the Coast Guard rescue crews had to take off their night vision goggle 40 miles away, the vision was so intense.
The fire is out now, but not because fire crews were able to extinguish it. No, in spite of all the news of how big oil companies were running drills to make sure that they could deal with an oil drilling emergency, the fire on the Deepwater Horizon burned completely out of control of all those who attempted to stop it.
The fire on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig is extinguished now only because the Deepwater Horizon itself is extinguished. This afternoon the oil rig sunk beneath the waves.
The disaster hasn’t ended, however. Something between 350,000 and 400,000 gallons of oil per day are surging out of the well that the Deepwater Horizon drilled. That oil is surging into the Gulf of Mexico, and no one has yet been able to slow it down, much less stop the spill.
The destruction of the Deepwater Horizon should serve as a warning to a nation that has become too dependent upon burning fossil fuels. It’s a symbol of the burning of oil gone out of control. If we continue to expand offshore drilling for oil and cut down mountains for coal, our nation may well burn and sink like that oil rig, and more than just eleven lives will be lost.
GOP Chairman Michael Steele started the push for expanded offshore drilling up and down the coasts of the USA in 2008 with his chant of Drill Baby Drill. As the Governor of the Petroleum State, Sarah Palin expanded the campaign of excess. However, the problem is bipartisan. Just a few weeks ago, President Barack Obama announced that he would promote Sarah Palin’s agenda of expanding offshore oil drilling, and most Democrats in Congress seem happy to go along with the idea.
This wasn’t the first warning. Just two weeks ago, an oil spill hit the Delta National Wildlife Refuge, near the edge of Louisiana’s Mississippi River Delta. Never mind, said the friends of Big Oil, let’s keep drilling.
Now, it seems likely that eleven people from the Deepwater Horizon will have died for the sake of Drill Baby Drill. Is their loss worth the benefit of keeping our nation’s oil binge going?
It’s time to put cheap slogans to justify a lazy and wasteful lifestyle behind us. It’s time that we make the simple sacrifices that can keep our planet clean, and can keep our fellow American workers alive to see another day.
When we don’t need it, we can turn off the light.
Instead of driving down the block to the store, we can walk.
Instead of buying all our food from the store, which sells things that were grown or baked together halfway around the world, we can grow more food for ourselves.
Instead of flying thousands of miles to attend business meetings, we can learn to write, talk on the telephone, and have conferences online.
We can go outside and play a game of soccer instead of playing another game at the Xbox or the Wii.
We can let the grass grow a little longer, and plant more gardens where our lawns have been.
We can learn to use our muscles as expertly as we’ve learned to use a stick shift.
We can reduce the amount of coal we burn. We can reduce the amount of oil we drill.
We can do it. We can be strong enough to stop being the nation of electric toothbrushes and gasoline-powered leaf blowers.
We don’t need more offshore drilling. We can learn to be a disciplined nation instead.
I did a quick search, and this may become the single largest oil/sea-based environmental catastrophe ever. How is this not the lead story every time I turn on the news; sure they mention it and show a few pictures, but so far, it’s like you know, another news story. WTF?
It’s the same way with all the frequent smaller oil spills that happen too. The corporate news outlets ignore them, and then tell people that oil spills are rare.
Just last year, Senator Mary Landrieu, a Louisiana Democrat in the pocket of Big Oil, said that a blowout like that in the Timor Sea certainly wouldn’t happen here, and so what if it did?
Is Landrieu going to say so what now?
I vote for completely shutting off every offshore oil rig in the world, or at least the ones that are under jurisdiction of the United States. We should all sacrifice and learn to live without the oil that those rigs are delivering immediately.
Why shouldn’t this excess all stop right this minute? Why wait for more certain oil spill? Even small ones are very bad for the earth.
I think that list above of simple sacrifices does not go anywhere close to far enough. If all of those things were done at even a close to a 50% adoption rate, the oil needed by this economy would still barely be touched. The rigs would still need to be there.
The best way out is total sacrifice. I’m typing this as we speak on a laptop powered by a stationary bicycle that I’m peddling on that has a little generator. We can all do this, it’s very easy, and very healthy, except my legs are getting tired.
CN, you’re seeking to make a sensible proposal absurd. That’s the argument against environmental policy most easily retreated to: That environmental policy requires us all to live like cavemen. It doesn’t. It just asks us to end extravagant waste in order to save human lives and not trash the only planet we’ve got.
What is absurd about getting rid of offshore oil rigs? I am just being more extreme in my proposal than you. It’s easy to claim that someone else’s lifestyle is “lazy and wasteful” by your standards. Now, I’m claiming that the standards you propose are too “lazy and wasteful” for me, and don’t go far enough.
The oil “saved” by your meager approaches above won’t come even close to getting rid of oil rigs offshore or anywhere else in this lifetime. Much more drastic measures are needed to make a serious dent. It would seem like you really are committed to anything, or merely don’t know much about what you are talking about.
Lawnmowing, for example, uses about 0.4% of the U.S.’s daily gasoline consumption. Even if you cut that IN HALF, you would save about 0.2% of our daily gasoline consumption. This is pretty trivial. (I can hear it now, “but it’s a start…”)
Stopping electric toothbrush use? Come on! Even more miniscule than lawn mowing. Grow some cohones and make a bold statement. It’s your miniscule, poorly-researched “proposals” that are absurd.
Gotta run now, I’ve got to go recheck the air in my tires again for proper inflation….
Only dramatic lifestyle changes will make real differences.
CN, if you’re being serious, then have at it, though I think you’re being too extreme and suspect that you’re being sarcastic. Far out environmental asceticism is what frightens many people about the idea of dealing with environmental issues. They feel as they feel going on a diet, like they’re going to have to give up everything they love. That’s not the case, and I think it’s profoundly unwise to suggest to people that they become total luddites.
You’re aiming at only particular items in the list – like lawn mowing and using electric toothbrushes. Of course, electric toothbrushes are merely emblematic of a huge collection of electric gadgets that aren’t really necessary and do use a great deal of energy. Lawn mowing may only account for .4 percent of our nation’s gasoline consumption, but Americans consume a huge amount of gasoline, so .4 percent of that represents a huge amount of refined oil.
Of course, I mentioned other items too, such as shipping, driving, and air travel, and I don’t see you criticizing them as irrelevant.
The point, CN, is that by shifting our focus we can significantly reduce the amount of oil and coal we use, and by doing so, not only reduce pollution and slow down climate change, but save the lives of workers who die in coal and oil industry accidents. We can still enjoy a high quality of life – and in some respects we can even improve the quality of our lives.
We need to be responsible, and disciplined, but we don’t need to be extreme, and we don’t need more offshore oil drilling.
We should stop buying things at the store that we can grow or bake at home.
I am ignorant of exact numbers but it would seem to me that if everyone stopped buying bread and turned there ovens on to make there own we would still use a great deal of gas and energy running millions of extra ovens.
If we all grow our own food wouldnt we drastically increase water consumption because of that? Plus we would have to till (I have 5 kids, we eat a lot of food and would need a very large garden). That would ofset some of the lawnmowing gas savings.
I agree that something should be done. We are poor stewards of what the Lord has given us but i a way I think CN is correct even if he is being sarcastic. Our life style changes need to be much larger if we are wanting to make a lasting differance. We need to fundamentally change how America views energy and lives.
Just my 2 cents…
Right. We need to be smart, not buy into the must-be-scary-sacrifice notion. Although Chucklenuts is being sarcastic, there’s actually some sense in his pedaling assertion: it certainly wouldn’t hurt if, instead of driving five miles to a gym to hop on a stationary bike, people just hopped on bikes or, better yet, hooked up a stationary bike in their house to a rechargable battery. As Jacob points out, there might be times when a buying bread from a baker makes more sense: if the baker is local, and if the scale of the bread-baking operation leads to less energy used per loaf. There are times when gizmos are called for — dishwashers waste less water than handwashing. Living close to where you work, or working where you live, is smart. Buying less stuff is smart.
The gardening question you have about water, Jacob, I think depends on where you live. Where I live we get enough rain to minimize the need for watering, and there’s a lot of water under the ground I can pump at a small energy cost from a well for supplemental watering. When I get my seed-saving down pat the whole gardening thing will make a whole lot of sense. Where I used to live, in the Arizona desert, vegetable gardening was crazy. Large numbers of people living in the Arizona desert? Also crazy, which is one of the reasons why I left.
So wouldn’t moving thousands of miles from the desert be considered a fairly drastic change of “lifestyle”.
If you move to New York, for example, you might easily consume just as much energy in the winter heating your home (and have a lot less opportunity to use solar energy very practically) as you would save in watering or air conditioning. There is really only a very small band of tolerance that the human being can live in comfortably. One of the reasons the species developed mostly in a certain area of the world, then moved elsewhere. Why the Inuits moved up to that frigid area is beyond me. My wife is always complaining she is hot, so maybe people like that love the cold. But you still can’t live there without dramatic life support issues.
What about the population density in urban areas, such as New York City, Boston, and Chicago? There is absolutely no way that little rooftop gardens and vacant lot public gardens can grow enough food to feed those people in that concentration. There is simply no way to justify those urban density lifestyles at the population levels the world has today, if we are to maintain a “modern” standard of living. You are kidding yourself if drastic steps will not be necessary. Green Guy thinks he and his kids can garden enough for all of them, and to an extent he can, but is he making his own clothes, electronic gadgets (which are ever more disposable) and so forth?
Modern living is simply incompatible with high populations, at least on this planet of limited size. When 150 years ago, most common people never traveled more than 30 miles from their birthplace, imagine that today. A heck of a lot of people commute regularly more than that each day for their jobs, or have jobs that often require air travel.
A lot of Chinese still have not lived much beyond the simple existence lifestyle. But as those billions start to creep up to a Western-style lifestyle, it won’t matter if you give up on minor cr_ap like store-baked bread (which is pretty regional anyway and has a huge economy of scale, not to mention how miniscule the packaging wrap for bread is), lawn mowing, playing Wii/xbox, walking a mile to the store instead of driving that same mile, etc. Those things won’t make a dent in the relative consumption of billions of Indians, Chinese, etc. who want to start living “the good life”.
You obviously haven’t lived in Tucson. The energy required to cool homes, move increasingly toxic water hundreds of miles through the desert, and in other ways deal with the profoundly anti-human environment is profound.
And your profound answer profoundly misses the point. I have spent a lot of time in Tucson, Phoenix, El Paso, Mexico, and a lot of other hot nasty places. And I do find the desert beautiful in many ways. Actually I’ve been through the desert on a horse with no name; it felt good to be out of the rain. In the desert, you can remember your name…. but I digress.
There are many variables, house size, style, materials etc. But check out many sources like thegreenguide.com that suggest that energy costs for heating in very cold climates outweigh air conditioning costs in hot climates. Certainly one can be traded off for the other. My original point is that humans can only exist in a very small window of climate, without a lot of outside support. Even my friends in Florida have to run their furnaces sometimes in winter, and in New York, Minnesota, etc, you have to air condition some days in summer, unless you just live like people did 100 years ago. Very simply and often times uncomfortable, hence the concepts of central gas/electric/oil heat and central air became very popular. When I was a kid, AC in cars was still pretty much an option; today it is very nearly a standard. A nation of pussies we might have become.
I’ve also traveled a lot in Europe. They don’t AC as much; don’t refrigerate drinks as much, and due to their bathing habits, often smell a lot worse that we are used to.
Bathing is an example of water usage that again, is relatively new to the 20th century. Baths in ancient Rome notwithstanding, most people who had to draw water for baths by the bucketful and heat it over a wood fire did so very rarely, sometimes a few actual times a year. We have legislated low-flow shower heads, etc. but a lot of people in this country still shower every day, and that can consume still many gallons of water, as we don’t force time limits. Same with washing clothes; nobody tells you that you can’t wash a pair of pants after wearing it one day. But many people did not used to.
If we all went back to those simpler lifestyles of water usage, it would go down a lot. There is also a reason why crops require a lot more irrigation today. They grow them in warm places where the growing season is longer. Try growing oranges on a large scale in Maine or Minnesota. Not going to happen; just do without.
Remember that bread from the store isn’t just baked. It’s also packaged in plastics made from oil, and shipped over long distances. That packaging and shipping is in addition to the packaging and shipping for the ingredients that go into all bread, so by making bread at home we’re taking a step out of the process. Yes, home ovens also take energy, but during the cold months, they serve the double purpose of heating our homes as we make food. Maybe we shouldn’t bake bread at home during the summer – I don’t have an answer for that one.
As for growing food in a garden, the benefits are dramatic. Unless we live in the desert, we can usually grow food without extra irrigation except when there’s a drought, so water use isn’t increased greatly. Kids can be a bonus in the garden… after a certain age… as they can help plant, weed and harvest and get a good appreciation for the food they eat. It is hard work to break turf by hand and shovel, but it can be done. I garden without a tiller, and 5 kids out with 5 shovels, plus an adult or two, could accomplish a lot. Many hands make busy work.
I agree that there are a lot of kinks to work out if we’re going to get back to sustainable living, because we’ve gotten out of the habit.
Beautifully written.
OK. So now I question the claims made by oil execs that modern oil rigs are safe.
If they were, this rig would still be afloat and 11 dead men would be eating dinner tonight.
What we need to say is that drilling for oil can help us offset our thirst for foreign oil but that it is a very dangerous business that can have disastrous consequence for our environment. An oil spill can decimate a fishing industry, pollute beaches, destroy tourism. The question is: Is it worth it?
Norris, I don’t think anyone wants to downplay a very serious tragedy. But consider these points as well. A lot of offshore oil rig safety changes have come into place since 1988 when the Piper Alpha oil platform in the North Sea caught fire and exploded killing 167 of the 228 on board.
Offshore oil drilling is, like many heavy industries such as bridge building or dam building pretty dangerous. For example the Hoover Dam, which I think was built in three years, from 1933 to 1936 had over 110 people killed during its construction. Over 70 people were killed during construction of the Grand Coulee Dam, and 20-30 people were killed building the Brooklyn Bridge. The “Green Boy” ignores the fact that quite a few people have been killed working on wind towers as well. And hydro power and wind are both so-called “green” technologies.
Considering all construction in general, offshore oil rigs are actually safer than the average. A lot of accidents are reported and do occur, but also the agencies report safety issues such as “bad hand railings”, “rusty stairs” and the like, so not all of these “safety violations” are necessarily more serious than what you might find at an older baseball stadium, although they are treated more seriously because of their locations at sea in potentially lethal areas.
The rate of accidents in this industry does decline, but there are almost 25% more workers in this industry than in years past, so that has to be factored into the total number of accidents.
It’s like the statistics in airplane travel. It is far safer than car travel, yet when you are involved in an airplane crash, it is usually spectacular (not in a good sense) and usually fatal. Not too many people wear a helmet while riding in an airplane or car, but accidents on a motorcycle or bicycle without one (and even with) can be far more catastrophic to the involved person, just due to the open nature of the rider. So ride your bike to work every day. It may be safer statistically than your car, but if you do get hit in traffic, your chances of death or serious head or other injury will be much, much higher than in a modern car with multiple air bags.
I’ll agree with your statement that “… oil spill can decimate a fishing industry, pollute beaches, destroy tourism..”
But maybe, if we want a sustainable lifestyle, we should discontinue commercial fishing anyway, which is bad for the environment and has caused the almost extinction of species. Maybe we should travel a lot less and stay closer to home instead of flying across the country to vacation on a beach. I can save energy all year and maintain a low carbon footprint, and you’ll blow more pollution, carbon output and environmental damage in one tourist flight from Boston to San Diego, or one two-week cruise ship than I’ve saved in a year.
Think about that.
CN, the impact of pollution upon fisheries and beaches are important regardless of whether we as individuals go fishing or vacation at a beach.
I like making billions every week.
That’s so very insightful!
Good to hear that the Coast Guard, in contrast to what you wrote above” …between 350,000 and 400,000 gallons of oil per day are surging out of the well that the Deepwater Horizon drilled. That oil is surging into the Gulf of Mexico, and no one has yet been able to slow it down, much less stop the spill…”
has reported that this has apparently NOT happened at this point. Let’s hope it stays that way, and the rest of leaked material is removed with the least impact.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5g5gnWbqZ9SqBHvSYqJeE2AT5KebwD9F9KQT00
So far, I think that I will stand by my statement above as being correct. In other words, what you wrote in the article above, which I will requote again, is STILL, as I write this, totally wrong and incorrect:
” …between 350,000 and 400,000 gallons of oil per day are surging out of the well that the Deepwater Horizon drilled. That oil is surging into the Gulf of Mexico, and no one has yet been able to slow it down, much less stop the spill…”
Secondly, to be accurate (which seems to be your sticking point) I nowhere in the previous statement said anything was “clean or clear”. In fact, I did reference to the leaked material. However, the older article you quoted above said this about the oil spilled:
“…The sunken rig may have as much as 700,000 gallons of diesel on board, and there are fears that the well the rig was drilling could leak.
An undetermined amount of oil has spilled from the rig, though the Coast Guard said Saturday morning that remotely operated vehicles had not yet detected any leaking oil from the well or rig. However, crews are closely monitoring the rig and well for any more crude that might spill out…”
So what you quoted did NOT say that between 350K and 450K gallons of oil per day were surging out of the well. The article you quoted said it was an undetermined amount of oil that had spilled from the rig, and that there were “fears” that the well “could” leak.
Because I like to be accurate as much as possible when I state something, unlike some others, I’ll refer to this newer article from the AP:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100425/ap_on_bi_ge/us_louisiana_oil_rig_explosion_165
This article mentioned that it could be as much as 42K gallons that are leaking. That is a little more than a tenth of what you stated in your article. So I believe your original statement was and is premature and grossly exaggerated in what it reported.
Crews have already recovered over 1000 barrels of oil-contaminated water, which is about what is currently leaking each day, so I still hope that their continued efforts are mitigating the effects of this as much as possible.
I believe this is clear and consistent as to what I stated earlier, and is an order of magnitude more accurate that what you stated.
No, actually, “ChuckleNuts” – it’s not really accurate what you say. There are tens of thousands of barrels of oil-contaminated water that have been collected.
The AP story that I cited was dated Sunday afternoon, and stated: “…The Marine Spill Response Corp., an energy industry cleanup consortium, also brought in equipment. So far, crews have retrieved about 1,052 barrels of oily water….”
If you have a current news source that lists something different, please cite it.
I’m certainly accurate and consistent with the source I cited, which was legitimate and recent.
Why didn’t the Fedearal Government call out all of the US Navy ships.. tenders, and cruisers could have contained the ‘spill’…..
Oh and don’t forget China and I believe.. If my mind serves me accurately, Brazil are BUILDING OIL RIGS IN THE US GULF…..