There, I've got the politics out of me for the month.
Friday, 7 May 2010
Second thoughts
I like oil. It makes my snowmachine run, which lets me have fun, get food, and go trap. This is very important to me, and running a dog team is not an option for me. This picture makes me re-think offshore oil in the Arctic, though:
As bad as this disaster is, I can't imagine floating chunks of ice would make it any less worse. I love our home too much to want this to happen to us.
There, I've got the politics out of me for the month.
There, I've got the politics out of me for the month.
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3 comments:
We're left with a dilemma that oil is both necessary and bad for us. The more we drill, the more we spill, by murphy's law and statistical probability alone.
So since we must, we should. But while we do that, we should also look into alternatives. Our diesel engines can also run on vegetable oil (which is why diesel engines were invented -- so that farmers could run their tractors with materials they had on hand), or perhaps we could run it on hydrogen, ethanol, or some more exotic fuel.
Our good fuel needs to be cheap, abundant, distributable, and safe.
And I get a headache just trying to think of it.
Having suffered through two major oil spills in Unalaska, I dread the thought of anyone else having to do so. The threat of economic ruin is a huge potential in any situation, and I really feel that the threat is overwhelming to the indigenous dwellers of the environment (both animal and human)who literally live and breath with the health of the resources.
We seem to need the oil, but I can't believe that's an excuse for stupidity. It boggles my mind to hear the BP execs now explaining that they never had any idea whether any of the usual containment methods would work with a well that is a mile deep. WTF? Anyone knows that accidents CAN (i.e. eventually will) happen, so how on earth could they - or we - allow drilling where there is NO back up plan beyond vague hopes that the old methods for shallow wells would miraculously work on mile-deep ones? And of course there were no booms or dispersents anywhere near at hand (and of course we have no idea how the dispersents or the oil globs will affect marine life at those depths). It would have been cheaper and better for us all to have checked those minor details out ahead of time, no?
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