I know this may sound strange considering that we live 1,300 miles from the Gulf, but we are responsible. If you drive a car, you are responsible. If you buy food imported from Mexico, California or South America, you are responsible. If you regularly take pharmaceutical medications, you are responsible.
You see, these habits, and many others, require oil and lots of it. All this oil is imported into Quebec one way or another. This demand for oil drives the hunger to find it, drill for it and extract it in places and situations that have eventually led to this disaster in the Gulf. It has the potential to kill vast quantities of life and food (I have heard possibly 68% of ocean life).
Ultimately, this disaster is not about oil or looking for energy sources. It is about our society and how we have organized ourselves to live a self-destructing, unsustainable way of life. The sooner we re-organize ourselves and take back the power to live autonomous, fulfilling lives, the better off we will be.
If a society cannot deal with resource depletion (which all societies are to some
degree designed to do) the truly interesting questions revolve around the
society, not the resource.~Joseph Tainter, The Collapse of Complex Societies~
“Change” President Unwilling to Tackle US Oil Addiction
Source: Spiegel Online
And there is also a simple reason that BP and other oil companies are drilling at depths of up to 1,500 meters (4,900 feet), far from the coast. They are servicing a greed for cheap energy and resources that fuels 250 million automobiles on America’s roads, keeps the country’s countless air-conditioners running and provides water for fantasy cities in the middle of deserts. There are 300 million Americans — around 5 percent of the global population — but they consume around 25 percent of the world’s oil.
As long as this thirst for energy persists, there will be no end to the costly gamble that oil production has become. Shortly before the Gulf catastrophe, Obama himself loosened regulations for coastal drilling.
With his address on Tuesday, the president had an opportunity to initiate a rethink of America’s approach to oil. But he preferred to stay vague — probably in no small part because he doesn’t want to come across as haplessly as Jimmy Carter. In 1979, the former president gave a similar address from the Oval Office. At the time, the US was suffering from an acute shortage of oil, the economy was in crisis and Carter’s presidency was also wavering. “Why have we not been able to get together as a nation to resolve our serious energy problem?” Carter asked, pensively.
Americans Don’t Want to Change
That’s not the kind of thing Americans want to hear. In 1980, voters drove Carter out of office. In his speech, Carter called for 20 percent of the United States’ energy to come from solar power by 2000 and for an end to dependence on foreign oil. Today, only 1 percent of the energy America consumes comes from solar power, and two-thirds of its oil is imported from abroad.
