After nearly 100 days of watching oil gush into the Gulf, a 'temporary' lid was applied. While minor leaks still exist, wells are mostly plugged in until a more permanent solution can be tried (among tropical storms preparing for summer). While the country may have heaved a sigh of relief - for a moment like the hat itself - the damage has occurred, much of which is beyond our comprehension, and was previously discussed at Verus.
What concerns me is not when the well will be permanently installed and the relief well (properly) installed, but how long will it be stored in our memories? Months from now, will you remember the destruction of the environment and economy in the Gulf region, and the impact it has on people and families in the region? How often do you think of the 29 people who were killed in a coal mine in West Virginia only in April, which may also be the result of poor safety surveillance? Just because coal does not escape and sulfur analyzer indonesia creates environmental and economic disasters does not reduce the impact on families, or the dangers associated with harvesting fossil fuels.
The short attention span of the news media and (therefore) the US people means that the spill will soon fade from the headlines to the bi-monthly report. And we will soon forget the potential consequences of such a huge dependence on oil. Look back at the oil crisis in the 1970s. With an embargo placed on oil from the Middle East, gasoline prices in the US skyrocketed, our vulnerability was exposed, and people panicked. In a glimpse of hope, Congress stated that renewable energy is needed to sustain our energy tastes. From all this was born (as it is now called today) the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, CO. But in a decade, funding for the laboratory was cut by 90%. Since then it has struggled to grow to the level needed to overhaul and advance our energy infrastructure, dealing with the ups and downs of funding levels. The nation has returned to fossil fuels, and has not looked back to the panic driven by dependence on black gold.
A few months ago, when oil flowed freely into the Gulf, President Obama spoke to the country about the crisis - past, present, and future. Once again, in an inspirational record, the nation was told that we would reduce our dependence on all fossil fuels, and that we must find alternatives to power our nation in an independent way. Talk is cheap, living up to this task is very expensive. It will be difficult to get popular support, especially in a sluggish economy. But it is necessary, and it must be a long-term commitment that is not reduced in the knee once the oil well is permanently repaired.
As we continue to drill and mine to meet our fossil fuel tastes, more wells will leak, more coal mines will collapse, and more destruction - environmental, economic, and personal - will occur. We have a number of alternative and clean energy sources that may not compete with fossil fuels, but are far more profitable in many other ways, and all of these technologies can use public and congressional support to become more attractive and more attractive. practical alternative.
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