Thu 20 May 2010
Reflections on oil
Posted by South Africa / Madeleine under Balkers
[10] Comments
If you reached this Balkingpoints.com article by direct external link, stop by the front page for an incredible satellite view of the earth in rotation!
I’m not qualified to talk about oil in depth, if you’ll pardon the pun, but it seems (to my surprise) that no-one has raised the point yet. To me the oil leak in the Mexican Gulf is one of the most important things that’s happened lately, and it puts the spotlight on oil as such.
Oil is one of the facts of daily life to which few people (except those in the industry) give much thought until a major spill occurs. Now we have one of those on the US’s doorstep. (There are others at this very moment, apart from the constant sluicing out of ship bilges etc. that daily pollutes the sea. Read the Kon-Tiki expedition and see how long ago tar balls were polluting the oceans. Leaks on land? We don’t hear much about these things.)
There’s no easy way to end oil dependence, and that’s not counting resistance from the oil industry.
To begin with, we need the stuff for our cars. Electric cars are beginning to feature; in South Africa we’ve just come up with our first home-grown car (the Joule) and it’s electric. Of course, electric cars rate only two cheers at most until we have clean energy.
Meanwhile, oil-as-fuel remains. It remains a prime pollutant in every way. Even when nothing goes “wrong”, the industry is morally pollutive , irredeemably so (check the dirt that’s being stirred up by the current enquiry into the Gulf spill) and probably most of the carbon pollution that’s driving climate change is fuelled by oil.
The oil industry is entrenched. There are many, many vested interests there. The world would be a far better place if we could replace fossil fuels with clean renewable energy. How do we do it?
What Say You?
What is your idea or preferred means, of energy conversion?
Welcome back Madeleine; nice Balk.
Of course the environmental movement and international Green Party, go back several decades by now. In the U.S. there was a lot of environmental activism in the 1970′s, laws passed to clean up air and water, and certain improvements made. Prior to that we had been a free-polluting, industrial-growth society as China is today. The Green Party remained active and even militant through the ’80′s and ’90′s, while the concerns faded here. Until global warming became accepted scientific reality – since then environmentalism has made a major comeback.
We have a Balk up from last summer about the validity of global warming, to which my take is that it’s irrelevant to the need for the industrialized world to get off fossil fuels. The economic, environmental and geopolitical benefits to be had in a conversion to renewable energy are massive, reduced CO2 benefits or not. When oil went up to US $147.00 on the world spot market in 2008, even Americans who never voted progressive or liberal, began to get it. Gasoline had doubled in price, hurting everyone – now was the time if ever, to make the switch.
Now you have this worst-ever oil spill disaster in the Gulf, a Chernobyl-like display of bad ideas hitting the fan.
Emerging possibilities like hydrogen fuel cells notwithstanding, conversion technology is in the can already ; biodiesel for combustion engines / solar, wind & hydro for electricity / geothermal furnaces for heating systems. These are simple and fully developed, all that is lacking is the political leadership to make it a priority.
It never happens without that, i.e. never if left only to the free market to decide energy forms. Every time the boom/bust cycle of oil goes bust, everything else emerging becomes too expensive by comparison.
And by political leadership I don’t mean top-down controls on greenhouse gasses ala an enforceable Kyoto-style treaty (destined to failure somewhere in the world). For me it means proper investment of seed capital for things like algae farms (biodiesel), and subsidies and/or tax incentives to do things like cover your roof with solar panels or put in a geothermal furnace or buy a hybrid-electric car. I don’t believe it will take more of a government hand in it than that. The costs of these products all fall with mass production, and then the revolution will be on. Governments and companies all over the world are already moving in that direction, and
I think we’ll see dramatic change in this decade.
Meanwhile it might be nice to get that gushing oil spigot in the Gulf of Mexico, stopped…
Most unfortunate for UK is the corporation mentality BP has applied to the catastrophe they’ve caused.
Directing blame at the rig owner and servicer firms. Not being at all prepared for a pipeline sever of this nature. Refusing to release real-time video of the sever. All whilst playing their political connections to set up liability limits at some figure, which will be entirely inadequate for the cleanup and compensatory claims such as fishing and tourism losses.
Just turn your speakers down since the music attached to this video sucks. And so does the leak.
Reply to Brit Hume last Sunday on the channel for Right Wing Nut Jobs, Fox News. Who said “Where’s the oil?”
This live cam happened after pressure from U.S. House Representative Ed Markey, D-MA. Before 2 days ago British Petroleum refused to make it public.
At what cost indeed … Not only to the oceans and the earth and to the livelihood of people (the most obvious costs) but, as I now experience fully, the cost of emotional pain to individuals even half a world away. I tried not to build too much hope on the ‘top kill’ attempt, but I know now that I was hanging on to the expectation that it would work. Because I cannot bear the alternative. Now we are stuck with that alternative, and I’m not pinning any hopes to the next effort, the slicing of the riser. It seems to be accepted that relief wells will do the trick (in August), but will they? Or must this well empty itself into the sea?
Might this be what it takes to make humanity take a good look at itself?
And that’s not all. During the first eight years of this century, I disliked and feared America – justifiably, I think. Then Barack Obama came into the picture, and he struck me as a decent human being who wanted to do the right thing. And even had a shrewd notion what it was. It is the worst possible luck that this oil spill should have happened now. Of course it will be blamed on him – by enough Americans, perhaps, to make the difference in November. By now a lot of you may be wanting to tell me to keep my nose out of things that don’t concern me … but what happens in the US, dear friends, concerns all of us. It’s part of the price you pay for your power.
I apologise for this emotional outburst. I am deeply committed to saving the earth (I cannot think of it as ‘the environment’, as though the human race were all that counts). Manmade disasters like this hurt me where I live.
I’m glad Madeleine that there are people in the world concerned enough to take stands for justice – social, economic, environmental, etc.
That’s where all the change comes from, of course. True of our entire history on the planet.
Which does bring up the question of whether this ecological disaster, isn’t somehow new in scope & scale. It does appear it may not stop until the well simply empties into the Gulf. Unless the relief well happens first – even then it’s months of oceanic pollution at the rate of Jeff’s clock above.
I believe that means a Black and Dead Gulf, fishing gone from it, hundreds of miles of coastland and tourism ruined for years. And it means worldwide oceanic pollution as the currents carry all that oil.
As I mention from time to time on B/P, what’s true about America is that it exports many things to the world both positive and negative.
Aside from some technological advances adopted globally, to me the best thing it has done is serve as a model for an enduring democratic system with individual rights, and a will & ability to effect a lot of that social justice over the centuries – gender and ethnic equality, fair labor standards, etc.
One of the major reasons for launching Balkingpoints, was to reach out to the world we had indeed alienated with the many negative things done in the prior decade by our leadership. And to make it clear America was never a political monolith, always home to millions of Progressives who are looking to push ahead with more of that social justice.
And in the age of the WWW, to do so in a more connected way with those of like mind globally – indeed billions of us. Counted and uncounted, declared and undeclared.
As far as the disaster and Obama, I don’t see any real effect on November Congressional elections. The gush (far more than any spill at this point) of oil, is a product of corporatism run amok, capitalism unchecked by proper regulation.
There can be no better examples than this disaster nor the global banking meltdown of 2008 (which continues in Europe), to demonstrate why adequate oversight of private business is needed by society. As far as
how much damage to environment and livelihoods and lifestyles we’re prospectively facing here, that’s what I mean by new proportions not seen in prior ecological disasters.
I actually do think it’s going to touch off new waves of citizen involvement here and worldwide. Sharper, more widespread demands for controls on industries that affect everyone and enrich a few – such as energy, banking and healthcare – and millions more becoming environmentalists in their thinking and voting.
Interestingly, most of the people whose lives will be wrecked by this (“red states”), have historically bought into Republican laissez-faire propaganda that allowed BP to set up it’s rig in their ocean. Now they see firsthand, how and why that was totally wrong.
I’ve been watching Jeff’s clock. Saw earlier this evening that BP have managed to install something that diverts some of the oil to a ship. Don’t really believe what I see any more, but do you know any more about this, Roy?
There’s an oil tanker aground on glorious pristine coast in Indonesia. And a geyser of natural gas, unchecked for hours, in Pennsylvania. Hopefully these things will attract more attention now.
Five Reasons the Copenhagen Climate Conference Failed
George Dvorsky
George Dvorsky
Sentient Developments
http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/dvorsky20100110/
after the apparent failure of Copenhagen, the only solution, if you really care, is to go “CAR-FREE,”
let’s keep trying to get corporations and governments on board, but, lead the way, one person at a time,
the greatest contribution anyone can make, besides appealing to corporations and governments, is to show the way, set an example,
go “CAR-FREE,”
if I can do it in Rochester, NY (a mini Los Angeles, all suburbanized), anyone in any metro area can pull it off, (heck, I even bicycle all twelve months),
we need to not accept car culture, it’s deadly in many ways,
my “happy meter” has only risen, really! at 57 I have the energy and agility of a 30 year old,
and, I’ve discovered local retailers, the beauty of appreciating beauty (now that I’m not zooming at 110 k past the flower gardens and old architecture) and am more acquainted with my neighbors,
it’s a beautiful lifestyle!
Copenhagen failed, we don’t have to,
here’s a helpful website: http://www.bicyclecity.com
You are the citizen of the future, Berig.
Pictures here from Pensacola Beach, Florida. For those who still think drilling in the ocean is an okay idea.
© 2010 · St. Petersburg Times
We must certainly continue to use fossil fuels, but only as a “bridge to the future” as we rapidly develop their replacements.
Here in the US, the overwhelmingly dominant producer of greenhouse emissions is electricity generation. The only realistic, scalable substitute for coal, oil and natural gas is nuclear power.
Hydrogen is a non-starter: it takes more energy to produce than is gained when it’s burned or catalyzed in fuel cells. It takes 2.5 times as much energy to manufacture a fuel cell than the cell will produce in its lifetime.
Wind and solar are too intermittent to provide what the grid-meisters call “baseload capacity.”
In America, we’re running out of suitable rivers to dam; the Department of Energy says there is probably only about another 30,000 megawatts that can be squeezed out of hydroelectric projects nationwide. But, we should do it anyway as it’s truly renewable (except in droughts, which are an expected consequence of climate change).
Nuclear power is the only real answer, and new technologies are available to keep it clean, efficient and safe.
More on this topic available here: http://truthandjest.blogspot.com/2010/04/does-american-dream-really-balance-on.html
Thanks for the forum. This site is great!