More Dangerous Than Cocaine, #4: We have met the enemy...

...and he is us.

This picture is making the rounds today. It's appalling. It's easy to blame oil companies for the nefarious happenings in the Gulf of Mexico, or lax government regulation, or complacent attitudes over safety, but ultimately, the blame lies with ourselves. A number of commentators in recent days have pointed out that every president since Richard Nixon have described the need for "energy independence", but as for taking real action, well, the only guy who tried to actually say we had to make hard choices got canned in favor of the happy-go-lucky grandfathery "morning in America" fellow in 1980. Meanwhile, ever since the 1970's, we've continued wasting petroleum and almost totally ignored the problem.

Even now, hardly anyone in the media or in the broader culture seems to be discussing the bigger problem. It's not seeping into the national conciousness the way it is into the gulf. It's not just the mess we made in the Gulf. It's the problem of the oil we burn. We are addicted to petroleum; we are doing nothing to curb that addiction, we are just working harder and paying more to feed our addiction. But the oil is running out, and we have no viable alternatives. We are poisoning ourselves, and overheating our atmosphere, but we will tolerate no talk of ...dare I say it?...sacrificing. Instead, we will just drift along until we hit a very tragic wall. Then the sacrifice will be on us whether we like it or not. Gas at $20/gallon? Not so far away. No gas at all, like the 1970's? Probably.

Contrary to the myth, you can't see the Great Wall of China from space. Check out the larger version of the picture above...maybe you are sharper-eyed than I am, but how sad that the one bit of evidence that we live on this planet that is visible from space is an oil slick. The oil spilled in the gulf may amount to 2 million barrels so far (over the two months)...that's about one-tenth of what we consume as a country per day.

I..er..uh, I have more to say, but I think American Idol is on. See ya'.

Satellite Imagery from NASA, full image is here (10 mb).

Learn about Pogo and the 1971 Earth Day Poster with the famous line "he is us" here.

More Dangerous Than Cocaine...Part 2

Photo from AP via Huffington Post (more here)

A drug addiction goes through stages: the highs, the loss of the high, the stealing for a hit, and then one starts hurting those around them to maintain the habit. And then gets worse, it's harder and harder to support the habit. And eventually one hits bottom.

It's been more than a month since my first post on the BP oil spill. The full magnitude of this disaster is still just beginning to evolve. I hear they've been trying to prevent the media from showing pictures of dead and dying animals. I wonder why? I've heard the money comparisons coming from Louisiana: offshore oil drilling produces several tens of billion of dollars annually and fishing only a billion or so. Choices. The oil is going to curl around Florida and move up the eastern Atlantic Coast. But we shouldn't stop offshore drilling; we know NOW how to keep it safe. Oh, and the whole disaster is the fault of environmentalists because we won't let them drill every last spot on land (Palin...again).

At what point will the media and the politicians start asking the right questions? When are we going to face our addiction, and take real steps towards breaking it? Do we do it when we still have good choices, or do we wait until our only choices are bad ones.

Once again: there isn't enough oil. We can't drill our way out of this problem.

More Dangerous Than Cocaine...

Just a short thought tonight...


If you haven't seen it, check out this video of the BP oil leak, via Deep Sea News (if it isn't showing right, try this link). A mile underwater, fifty miles from our shores. And turning into an environmental and economic catastrophe.

How did we end up here? The comparison to drug addiction is so apt. At first, the oil was easy, literally leaking out of the ground in places (the picture below is Signal Hill in Long Beach, California in the 1920's). Our country grew dependent on it for transportation, for agriculture, for plastic for God's sake, until it pervaded our society. We started to run short in the 1970's, and realized we were dependent on it, and that it was becoming expensive to maintain our habit. We made tentative efforts to conserve it, to use a bit less, and our overseas suppliers flooded the market until we gave up such silly pursuits as electric cars.

And where are we now? Certain politicians tell us we have to drill our way out of this fix, going into ever more hazardous environments to find crude. They speak as if there is enough oil underground on our continental shelves to relieve our dependence on foreign sources. What can we geologists say?

There isn't enough.

We could drill every drop in our country's territory, and have no more than a decade's worth. There are alternatives, but we need politicians and commentators who have the courage to do an intervention, to tell us the hard truths. Unfortunately, they are cowards, or worse, in the pockets of the pushers.

Update: My first impression of the Climate Bill is that it is just the kind of soft squishy something-for-every polluter/energy producer that is neither bold action, nor particularly helpful.

The Power of a Photograph...

Photography is such a powerful medium. I ran across this article on 30 Photos That Changed The World. All of the pictures are emotionally powerful, especially the 1863 Mathew Brady shot of Civil War dead at Gettysburg. Most of the photos feature people, as well they should, but three stood out for their geological content: the view of the Earth rising over the moon, the shot of Buzz Aldrin walking (dancing?) on the Moon, and Ansel Adam's panorama of the Grand Tetons.

So many things happened in the late 1960's and early 1970's when I was leaving childhood. It was a scary time in many ways, and exhilarating. We worried about life being obliterated by mushroom clouds, but were coming to the realization that we could clean up some of the mess we had made of things. There was a war that was claiming the lives of friends and family, but we were learning that equality of all people was a possibility (even though we still single out groups in our society; it's a long road...). Seeing the Earth for the first time from space, though, had a huge impact on my personal life.

Another event of those years was the 1969 oil spill at Santa Barbara. The disaster was one of the catalysts for the first Earth Day, and led to a moratorium on new oil drilling off the coast of California that has continued for four decades. There are many issues, and it is unfortunate that opponents to the moratorium can say little more than "drill, baby, drill" as if sucking out every last bit of our remaining petroleum would make us somehow more energy independent (the reserves in the U.S. would last us not even a decade if we stopped importing oil today).

Of course, one of the arguments in support of offshore drilling is that with forty years of experience, the process is perfectly safe. It makes the events of the last few weeks all the more heartbreaking. There is an arrogance that accompanies a dependence on a particular technology. We see it with nuclear power as well. When they go wrong, what happens next? We made a choice in the 1980's to pretend that oil would last forever, and the U.S. made no serious efforts for two decades to increase mileage standards or build alternate forms of transportation. So we are forced to import even more oil, or drill for oil in ever more dangerous and unstable environments.

What is the power of a picture?

I really wonder if the "drill, baby, drill" crowd has any sense of introspection at all. Did any of them stop for a minute and wonder if this really the best way forward, before calling for increased drilling? Does an image like this carry the power to overcome apathy and willful ignorance about our vulnerability to energy disruptions? We are running out of time and choices.

Update: Devilstower has some similar sentiments...

Update #2: Famed Oceanographer and Marine Fisheries expert Rush Limbaugh checks in about the oil slick threatening the southern states: ""The ocean will take care of this on its own if it was left alone and left out there. It's natural. It's as natural as the ocean water is." He also is pretty sure environmentalists blew up the oil rig.

Update #3: On the other hand, here is what a real petroleum geologist has to say, Rachel at 4 1/2 billion years of wonder (thanks to Jules and Rachel for their comments!).

One of the Biggest Political Ironies I think I will ever see...

1969 Oil Spill in Santa Barbara Channel, California (AP photo from Los Angeles Times)

However one might feel about drilling for oil in the continental shelf of the United States, the events of the last month have to stand as one of the greatest political ironies in the country's history. One month after a Democratic (!) president opens up vast areas for offshore drilling, a massive explosion kills eleven people on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, and a huge oil slick is making landfall along the shorelines of what will ultimately include four states. You may be able to think of some better examples, but it makes me think of the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo which ceded California to the United States on February 2, 1848, when unbeknownst to the signing parties, gold had been discovered in California on January 24 of the same year. We are only seeing the beginning of what will be a long and painful time for the coastal cities, not to mention the ecosystems found there. The political ramifications will last far longer; the oil spill in the Santa Barbara Channel in 1969 still resonates today. And so does the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster.

I hope that the damage can be contained. It won't do anyone any good if the beaches all along the southern coasts are coated with muck. I do hope it will start a national conversation about our priorities. Despite the shrill cries of "Drill Baby, Drill", pulling the oil out of environmentally sensitive areas will do next to nothing to achieve energy independence. Without imported oil, we would pretty much use up our entire inventory of US petroleum reserves in maybe five or six years. Where will we be, then? We need to plan for a post-petroleum economy before it is forced on us, not after. It is the only way to avoid an economic disruption that will make the present-day recession look like the Roaring Twenties. But how can you explain that to representatives and senators who are incapable of looking beyond their next election day?

Deep Sea News provides a very good timeline of the events in the Gulf of Mexico.

I don't want to make light of a horrible situation, but I hope no prominent politician stands up to say how absolutely safe nuclear power is now...