Oil Spills Continue, Just Business As Usual
Despite the hullabaloo created around the world by the Deepwater Horizon accident, oil spills are hardly a new occurrence. They’ve been happening since prehistoric man first accidentally tapped into an underground petroleum reservoir.
Long prior to BP’s debacle, yellow and orange booms have permanently ringed rigs in the Gulf – and around the world –, in effort to contain the inevitable daily leakage from a far-from-perfect extraction process. Study the reports from just the past twelve months of leaks and spills in the Gulf; they are common occurrences, though usually measured in the hundreds of gallons rather than millions.
And given our lack of a cohesive energy policy, our national unwillingness to truly commit to developing alternative energy sources and still-growing demand for energy from fossil fuels, such leaks and spills and gushings will continue.
Just read the headlines from the past few days: A thirty-inch pipeline near the Kalamazoo River splits and spills a million gallons of oil into a waterway headed for Lake Michigan. A barge slams into an abandoned well in Barataria Bay at 1 a.m. (an ecologically-sensitive estuary already dealing with a massive oil mess thanks to BP) sending a shower of water, natural gas and oil spewing into the air for days.
(For the rest of my dispatch go to takepart.com)
Tags: Barataria Bay, Booms, Deepwater Horizon, Fossil Fuels, Gulf, Kalamazoo River, Lake Michigan, Oil Spill, TakePart.com
Carbon capture technology continues its development from a theoretical concept to practical facilities currently being built in the US through federal government funding. With the right carbon capture technology and continued development of automobile battery technology the United States will have the ability to run free from oil by using extensive domestic coal reserves to produce electricity to drive electric cars. The carbon capture portion of this will reduce the carbon emissions to minimize any potential impact to the climate. Maybe we can then give up the pursuit of risky offshore drilling within the decade!