Oil industry allies have come up with a rather cynical response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, saying that if people would just allow Big Oil to drill wherever it wants on land, then offshore drilling wouldn’t be necessary. The unspoken premise in this argument is that drilling for oil on land is safe.
An oil spill in Utah this weekend ought to remind people that oil drilling on land comes with risks as well. Tens of thousands of gallons of oil gushed out of a broken pipeline, flowing into creeks and ponds in a public park, and almost entered the Great Salt Lake before it was stopped. Large numbers of birds and other animals were coated with oil.
The reasonable response to the massive pollution that results from oil drilling is not to expand drilling in places where oil spills haven’t happened yet. Instead, we need to work to use less oil, as individuals and as a society.
We are in the oil age. Conservation efforts can only do so much and it won’t be enough. We went from cars that got 12mpg to 20mpg and now moving through 30 yet our dependence has only grown. Our entire day is filled with oil. Until we find a replacement for oil we are stuck with spills.
That’s an extremely passive point of view, based upon the belief that there are Ages of history that people are stuck in, and that people don’t and can’t do anything to move onward. We just have to wait for the Clean Age to come along, and be dirty until then? I don’t think so, JD.
Realistic, not passive. I’m doing my part.
The thing is they were able to stop it weren’t they killing only a small number of creatures who will easily reproduce versus getting caught in ocean currents being spread all over the place killing the shrimping industry and killing many sea animals as well and then causing tourist issues where the beaches are closed and all the other many effects from a deep sea drill. But hey a few chipmunks and deer is the equivalent to thousands if not millions of dead creatures.