Environmental Disasters: British Petroleum’s worst nightmare may be one of the biggest environmental disasters of all time. Was it simply gross negligence on BP’s part, or is recovering oil at sea flirting with disaster? Are such spills inevitable no matter what safety precautions are taken? BP isn’t the real culprit here. We are. As long as we continue to demand oil for energy we put the environment at risk. In fact, as obvious as the pollution is in the gulf, it doesn’t compare to the daily pollution from automobiles. If your car were confined to running inside your home, the exhaust would kill you in minutes. Our lust for energy is undoubtedly the biggest contributor to pollution in the world. Statistics are near impossible to find because no one wants to stick their neck out and invite a lawsuit. Knowing we are destroying the environment doesn’t seem to be enough to wean our demand for oil.
Where is the justification for doing what we do? Certainly it makes sense to seek energy independence as a nation, but drilling offshore is not the long-term solution. Fossil fuels are a limited resource, and while it may be true that we have enough for fifty years, does it make any sense to deplete the resource. Even if the United States could produce all the energy it was consuming, that still doesn’t make anyone energy independent. Pumping energy into an inefficient grid makes no sense at all.
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