An Examination of Mankind's Never-ending Quest for Extinction
Much has been written in speculation of the cause, or causes of the current oil disaster in the Gulf.
I would like to posit the following opinion:
It doesn't matter what caused the disaster, because knowing the cause will not prevent another incident, and still another until we have unalterably doomed our already slim chances for survival as a species.
Sure, there are technical reasons to trust Nuclear power plants more today than we should have trusted them 30 years ago. Designs are more sophisticated and becoming standardized, and we're much closer to developing real technological solutions to nuclear waste management. Should we finally trust the industry with our lives?
We've been hearing similar arguments in favor of off-shore oil platforms, and often promoted by people who should know better, or at least show a modicum of skepticism. Naturally, the industry has inundated us with slanted babble. Turn on a Sunday talk show and you'll likely see a commercial with a smart-looking blonde tell you that we have enough untapped natural gas in this country to heat every household in America for the next 60 years. Sounds great.. but then what? Fuck the grandchildren? Oil companies already hold the leases to most of the oil and gas rich land in this country. They just don't bother to tap it. After all, more supply means lower prices. So they continue to lease and re-lease the land and the American people don't see a nickel of rent. Their campaign to control more leases is based on their desire to achieve a 100% monopoly. I remember when "monopoly" was a dirtier word than "Socialist." If tapping our domestic oil supply is so critical to our national security and survival, why is BP allowed to sell our precious oil on the International market? Shouldn't we be filling our basements and swimming pools with the stuff? When candidate Obama suggested that we would be better off properly inflating our tires to achieve maximize fuel performance rather than construct more off-shore platforms, he was roundly ridiculed. However, the statistics behind his claim were accurate. All of the untapped oil in the Gulf would not yield the additional mileage gained if American's simply adjusted their tire pressure to maximize performance. Of course, air is free, and the MSM was more interested in offering free soundbite time to the Republican choir.
The MSM thrives on stupid, like this week's CNN poll that showed 75% of Americans favoring a SCOTUS candidate with prior experience on the bench. Even the conservative Christian Science Monitor conceded that 64 justices never even attended law school, yet alone sat on a bench. But why educate the public with facts when you can poll them after the RNC tells them what to think?
Of course, more Fox viewers believe the oil rig was torpedoed by the North Korean navy (with Obama at the helm) than believe Joe Biden was born in this country.
Arguably, candidate Obama had the drilling issue nearly as wrong during the campaign as he does now. Jevon's Paradox suggested that increasing efficiency of coal mining would only raise demand for the product rather than reduce it. Around 100 years after Jevon's Paradox was published, the Khazzoom-Brookes postulate suggested that the only way to dissuade over-use of a commodity was through the addition of a tax, like Cap and Trade. Yet, Cap and Trade appears to have become a hopeless political issue at a time when we need it the most.
A hundred years has also passed since the first flying machine was cobbled together in the back of a bicycle shop in Ohio. The technological advances in air travel since that first Wright Brothers flight off a Kitty Hawk sand dune have been mind-boggling. Yet, despite high tech metallurgy, CAD designs, high-speed computer assistance, "fail-safe" monitoring and sophisticated redundancies in safety systems, etc. etc., airliners still experience catastrophic failures. Human oversight is still a necessity, and it's only as good as the people handed the responsibility. Unfortunately, we live in a World where the public trust is routinely broken - often sold out to the highest, or lowest, bidder. Non-feascance, mal-feascance or misfeasance by a corporate executive, line worker or Federal overseer can lead to large-scale and irreparable havoc. We may yet discover that the sexual appetite of the folks in charge of Mr. Bush's Mineral Management Bureau may have done more to set the table for the Gulf disaster than any mechanical failure.
Even if the technology for safe oil exploration and fool-proof nuclear plants improves 10-fold, what exactly does it buy us? As we are currently witnessing, a single accident can destroy 1/4th of our domestic supply of seafood in a matter of weeks - and this particular disaster may still be in its infancy. In three months time, this same oil slick could be carried by the Gulf Stream past the fragile ecosystem of the Everglades and spill oil onto the beaches of Southeastern Atlantic States (all the way up to Kitty Hawk). Potentially, the slick could threaten the rich Grand Banks fishing grounds just South of Newfoundland.
No matter the technological advancements, we will continue to rely on individuals to properly apply and oversee technology. For decades, the World has managed to avoid nuclear armageddon but as the clock ticks on and the nuclear club widens, the risk of nuclear war increases. Yet, every day, we mindlessly hand over the power of vast devastation to legions of unknown overseers in power plants and on oil platforms. Sooner or later, all the technology in the World won't be able to undo the whoops caused by one nameless and careless schmuck charged with monitoring a set of critical pressure gauges. Suddenly, it'll mean goodbye to another measurable percentage of our food and/or water supply - or maybe goodbye Cleveland.
In my opinion, we're taking a gamble that no sane society should accept.
At the very least, we cannot afford to expand the number of these high-risk enterprises. Already, there are thousands of off-shore platforms dotting the Gulf, and each one could be the site of the next mega-disaster. Multiply that chilling thought by the number of platforms, Worldwide. Iceland's recent volcanic activity further crippled the World economy. The eruption may have been a direct result of global warming reducing the weight of the ice cap that has helped keep Iceland's volcanic activity at a minimum. Now, we are not witnessing a "spill," but rather, a volcanic eruption of oil at the bottom of the sea, and if it continues to go unchecked, every sea on Earth could be affected by its refuse.
In the early morning of a March day in 1978, a traveller on the Pennsylvania Turnpike could make out the silhouette of four imposing cooling towers along the Southern horizon. At 4:00 AM, just moments after a pilot-operated relief valve failed to open, a chain-reaction of minor mechanical failures soon followed and rapidly escalated into a major crisis - a crisis amplified by human error. The fissionable fuel in the core of the nuclear plant began to melt down and 200 tons of molten and highly volatile Uranium started to drop to the bottom of containment tower #2. By luck more than design, a nuclear holocaust was narrowly averted, but the survival of a heavily populated American city was long in doubt. A few years later, the sleeping residents of Bhopal (in 1984) and Chernobyl (in 1986) were not to be as fortunate.
For 32 years, tower #2 at Three Mile Island has remained a radioactive tomb - a perpetuating monument to human conceit. How many more such monuments must we erect before we finally say, "no more..." or before the planet says it for us?