I’ve been watching the live feed of the Gulf Oil leak with dread and loathing:
It strikes me as odd that we’re all up in arms about the Gulf Oil Leak (which on the low side is dumping 5,000 barrels a day into the Gulf) but we consume, burn and convert 18 million barrels of oil a day, much of which ends up in our atmosphere. Don’t get me wrong, this is an environmental catastrophe any way you look at it, but look around, everyone is still driving and we’re still consuming oil.
Which is why we’re drilling for it in in such hard-to-reach places in the first place.
In any other context, an oil blow out or gusher is cause for celebration, a sign of abundance and plenty, a symbol of successful resource exploitation. Not so much here. It’s like the Earth is saying, “Here, you want some oil? I got some oil for yas.”
Electric and/or hydrogen fuel cell cars are the way to go. While millions of electric cars won’t exactly solve traffic and congestion issues (and have their own issues with batteries), they’ll at least move us in the direction of reducing our oil consumption so that, eventually, we won’t have to drill for oil 5,000 feet below the surface of the sea.
And if, by some developmental and policy miracle, we can power those vehicles with electricity produced by solar panels or wind farms (like Tehachapi, whose controversial lines snake through the SCV), we will have arrived.
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Windmills are huge avarian cuisinarts. Stop the tax credit for electric vehicles and tell Obama to plug the gusher of red ink flowing from DC.
Now if we just had a reliable, renewable and cheap form of electricity… LIKE NUCLEAR… to run all of this, then we’d only have to concern ourselves with rebuilding our crumbling electrical grid…
Nuclear energy scares the hell out of me. Everyone talks about how nuclear power is so safe now, but the same was also said of deep sea oil rigs. It’s also supposed to be clean, except for the highly toxic waste it produces that stays toxic for thousands of years and that no one wants to bury in their city or state. It’s also supposed to be a long-term energy solution, but uranium is a non-renewable resource. Then there’s the whole problem with terrorists potentially getting radioactive material for a dirty bomb or targeting a nuclear power plant with an attack. If someone figures out the cold fusion thing, sign me up, but I’ll pass on fission.
This is just another example of how our nation languished under the misguided and neglectful leadership of Republican oilmen Bush and Cheney.
Drill baby drill? Now people realize how stupid it is to have that as the cornerstone of our national energy “policy.”
In France 80% of their power comes from Nuclear…simple fact is we need reliable alternative forms of energy, can’t Jeff go get some of those crystals they use in Star Trek to power the core?
What happened in Cheney’s closed door energy meeting? We need to know if it was criminal.
Tell me how a government small enough to drown in a bathtub can possibly respond to an oil gusher like this. No, seriously! I want Norquist and the rest of you teabag geniuses to explain this!
I have heard many compare this to the Gulf War well fires. What a bunch of idiots. There is no comparison to desert land gushers and this!
Hey, thanks for embedding our widget. Great to see someone blogging in my hometown.
And we can buy all the electricity we need to charge those car batteries from Arizona. Oh, wait…
Chevy Volt-230 MPG baby!
http://videos.mediaite.com/video/Chris-Matthews-Bashes-Obama-Ove