The BP oil spill just seems to get worse and worse. The estimates of how much oil is spilling into the Gulf of Mexico seem to go up almost daily – the press reports are beginning to sound like an auction. Now, according to Steven Wereley from Purdue University, the amount of material spewing into the Gulf may be up to 84,000 barrels per day. Eugene Chiang, from the University of California, estimates the spill rate may be up to 100,000 barrels per day. There is a potential that 2 more months of oil spilling may go on until relief wells can be finished by August. This means that there will be 10s of millions of gallons of oil spilled into the waters of the Gulf. Compounding the problem is the toxic nature of the dispersant being used. The amount of environmental and economic damage this accident will cause is as yet incalculable. The genetic mutations caused in the creatures of the gulf, and the concentration of oil in the oysters, shrimp, crab, and fish will mean that people won’t be eating any seafood from the Gulf for quite a long time. We will never know the scale of the suffering of all the creatures affected by this unnecessary man made disaster - not only the lower life forms, but birds, sea turtles, manatee, dolphins, and whales, too. The Gulf ecosystem may be ruined for decades. We are looking at one of the worst man – made disasters in history.
There are many factors contributing to this disaster, including corporate greed, pressure to cut corners in the name of speed and profit, lack of regulations, drilling in dangerous environments without backup plans and technologies for accidents, a lack of foresight that such an accident could happen and what that would mean, a lack of vision of how badly things can go wrong. Oil drilling has been going on pretty much in the same way since it began, and the ways oil companies are accustomed to drilling on land have been applied to drilling underwater. There has been an emphasis on generating profits over innovation.
Our fascination with big business and industrial conglomerates has created massive bureaucracies run by people far removed from the day to day activities of their workers. Also, the managers of these organizations are insulated from the consequences of their actions upon the workers and the lives of the communities they affect. The vested interests of international holding companies and big businesses like the old Standard Oil, Enron, and AIG were and are - like BP - beholden to their shareholders – not their workers, local communities, or the environments in which they work. If they have no local roots or real ties to the communities in which they do business, such corporate goliaths will have no strong sense of responsibility for the consequences of their actions. If there are problems, they can just move elsewhere.
The use of dirty technologies has taken precedence over the development of cleaner energy sources that require substantial up-front investments to develop. Cleaner energy sources require popular political support to publicly fund research into new technologies and they also require people to make the lifestyle and social changes necessary to incorporate the newly developed technologies into their daily lives. Also, there is the insatiable and increasing demand for more and more energy, especially more oil. Currently there are 1000s of oil rigs in the world’s oceans. A similar spill could happen anywhere at any time. We can also be sure the terrorists are watching the oil spill closely.
Increasing numbers of people realize that we must eventually wean ourselves off of our dependence on fossil fuels. Nonetheless the amount of investment necessary to develop widespread use of solar, wind, wave, and geothermal power hasn’t been made. Some people are suggesting that we move towards the increasing use of nuclear power; they fail to realize and acknowledge that as nuclear plants and waste proliferate, the risks for accidents increase, and the nature of such accidents become catastrophic. As I write there is nuclear waste water leaking into the NJ aquifer from a nuclear plant. With thousands of nuclear facilities on the world’s rivers are we prepared to replace oil slicks with radioactive water spilling from nuclear plants circling the Earth’s oceans?
As a direct result of the BP oil spill, an increasing number of people are becoming aware of how dependent we are upon oil and technology and how helpless we are when things go terribly wrong. It was only a few generations ago when most people had to make their own products or trade for them with people who could. Today most of us would be unable to fix our cars, appliances, or computers if they broke down. The world is becoming increasingly complex and the activities and technologies supporting our infrastructure – those things which enable our modern lives to go on smoothly - are increasingly distant from our ability to understand, build, or fix them. Consequently when disaster strikes, we are less and less able to figure out how to deal with the ensuing chaos.
We are helpless when tasked with fixing things ourselves. The combination of the increasing complexity of the technological world necessary to sustain life, the increasing rarity of natural resources, and the consequent need to search ever farther afield for the resources we need form a perfect storm of problems for us when things go awry. Now, in order to sustain our societies we must reach out to the most inaccessible regions of the Earth to meet our needs. When disaster strikes we are unprepared for it and will be unable to make quick fixes when advanced technologies in remote areas are required to repair the damage. Consequently, accidents will get worse and more frequent and our ability to fix them will be strained to the limit.
This spill is an example of something that humanity will experience more and more. Our dependence on dirty energy, dirty technologies, and polluting products (like plastic bags and bottles) will increasingly risk the destruction of our natural environments and make their clean up less easy and less likely. We are suffocating ourselves. Our modern world is living the Black Sabbath song “Killing Yourself to Live.” Our increasing demand for energy and environmental resources will begin running into the consequences of the increasing decimation of our environment necessary to sustain the continuity of our mass consumption, mass destruction lifestyles. Without serious social commitments to new ways of thinking, acting, living, and the development of new, cleaner technologies and products, we will continue down the path towards increasing pollution, large scale disasters, an inability to repair the damage we cause, the destruction of the worlds resources, and the consequent poisoning of our planet. The BP oil spill should be a wake-up call! We need to make some major changes, and we better get started soon, before things are too far gone and we turn our planet into another “Dead Sea.”
Copyright 2010, B.E. Foley
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