That Oil Spill, What A Mess

What a god awful mess out in the Gulf Coast thanks to the good folks over at British Petroleum affectionately known as BP. I can’t believe they still haven’t capped the oil spewing from the hole on the ocean floor.  200,000 gallons of the stuff a day.  BP seems less worried about cleaning up than capturing and cleaning the oil for future use.  They do that.  Suppose to be a fairly straightforward purification process.  They will profit from this mess yet, even as the spill wrecks the fragile coastal environment and the tourism and fishing industries of the Gulf Coast.

That the Obama administration has yet to denounce drilling as an unsafe, and unwise practice is completely baffling to me.  It comes as no surprise however that the Republicans and some Democrats too – Senator  Mary Laundrieu for example, whose top legislative priorities are energy security and coastal issues –  have tried to minimize the catastrophe to protect the oil industry.  Well, we should be securing clean energy policies, not risky policies that dirty and destroy our fragile coastal areas and vital industries.

If there is any silver lining in the massive environmental disaster it would be that dead jellyfish have started to wash up on shore.  I’m serious.  Those destructive creatures have multiplied to the point that their numbers are simply out of control, as they reek untold damage to fisheries, and the tourist industry.  They sting.  Do they ever, and some stings are deadly.   The only other possible good thing that could come from the disaster is that our political leaders could wake up and realize that “drill baby drill”  is suicidal.  I agree with Bill Maher who said, and I’m paraphrasing, that we are our own worst enemy.

BP.  Get it together.  Cleanup.  Pay Up.  And get out.  No more drilling for oil anywhere.  Time to move on to clean, renewable energy – and not coal.  There’s no such thing as clean coal and it’s not renewable.  Think about it.  Wind, electric, solar, bio-fuels, and leg power.  That’s all we need.  Okay, a little nuclear sprinkled here and there with a smattering of geothermal exploration and hydroelectric tinkering.  Let’s also run some stuff on recycled vegetable oil for good measure.  Depending less on foreign and our own oil is the key to a safe and sane energy policy.