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.