Oil, black gold and also killer

The black gold just as its cousin the real gold is well suited to bring out the human condition. Greed, carelessness, the risk fuelling inventiveness and what is commonly considered progress. Petroleum along with coal have propelled the industrial revolution and both have added considerable stories of tragedy and loss to the storybook of mankind. It is telling that at a moment of time when the end of oil is being proclaimed by some and renewable energies are in everybody’s mouth (but barely in anybody’s furnace) that oil is leaking profusely from the earth and into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. One mile deep under water where it is very cold and very very dense and dark. Inventiveness is being challenged to not only make the earth give up the oil but now also to stop the gushing. Deepwater plumbing sounds awfully similar to the familiar one, cutting and plugging and bending pipes. However, the oil keeps gushing. Although one can see the geyser online, BP is the sole steward of this debacle unlike, say a big industrial fire on land which would bring practiced government response into quick action. Thus, the catastrophe is private but the outcome is public. The consequences from this imbalance are not yet clear. Maybe we will learn that we cannot hand over the world to the big monopolies.
With the smog of winter gone from most of our cities, with cars burning cleaner and the ubiquitous plastics all around having no apparent similarity with the black goo that is petroleum, we so-called industrialized nations have forgotten what a big mess oil really is. The rig that exploded was supposed to be a safe and modern affair until it exploded and sank. Now public opinion is shifting from “drill baby drill” (Republican slogan during the last presidential election) to caution against more offshore drilling. Nobody is clamoring for drilling in the Alaskan reserve right now and Republicans shifted quickly from wanting more drilling to blaming Obama for considering additional off shore oil exploitation in recent months or for not having enough government involvement in the current calamity. There is so much irony in all that that it would be funny weren’t the dimensions of this ecological tragedy on so gigantic that we cannot even fathom them.
Yet, nothing has really changed except that the Gulf calamity shows once more that whatever contraptions humans invent, they will fail once in a while. With an oil carpet of gigantic size floating aimlessly in the sea still fuelled by the flow from the depth it is clear that no plan exists for a disaster of this scale. In effect there was one barrier designed for the case of breakage and it failed, now all bets are off. As land mammals we are most concerned about oil reaching land and feverishly build flimsy barriers so the oil would stay afloat and not wash up on terra firma. We even spray detergents into the mess so it would disperse and sink, out of sight, out of mind. Once the winds shift and storms hit the barriers will be overrun and one day we will discover that oil in the sea or at the bottom of it is as destructive there as on land.
Offshore oil drilling will be “out” for a few years maybe while nuclear is in again because it is supposedly so clean and carbon free. Until a big nuclear accident will occur and will make us remember that the nuclear gamble is even much bigger than the one with oil.
Let’s hope these are the last throws of the dirty age of fossil fuels and nuclear adventures and the beginning of a truly sustainable future. But don’t hold your breath.