We've Never Done this Before!?!?

As I listened to Adm. Thad Allen's press conference this morning I heard the Admiral used an approximation of the phrase, 'This [repair attempt] has never been tried at 5,000 feet (below the ocean surface) before'. This is not the first time I have heard some version of that phrase used regarding the repairs being attempted on the oil wellhead that has been gushing thousands upon thousands of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico every day.

More than six weeks into this man-made disaster the oil still flows from the broken pipe as BP has tried various repair techniques with campaign-slogan sounding names like the "Top Hat", "Top Kill", and of course the most recent "Cut & Cap" procedure underway as I write this post. These are, as we have been reminded frequently, stop-gap measures that might reduce the amount of oil flowing into the waters of the Gulf. The "ultimate fix" is the pair of relief wells that are currently underway with an extremely optimistic, and purposely vague, completion estimate of "August". We are asked to remember that this is "unprecedented", these procedures have never been attempted at the depths and pressures involved in this situation.

The problem, of course, is that this is not, in fact, unprecedented (see previous post "When will we ever learn"). The ability to deal with a catastrophic failure like the one that occurred on the Deepwater Horizon has not kept up with the inevitability of such catastrophic failures. Yes, such a failure is "relatively rare", at least on the massive scale of the Deepwater Horizon spill, if you consider every 30-40 yrs to be rare. On a geological timescale such intervals are literally blinks. The ecological damage to the coastal wetlands will take many generations at least, probably centuries, to recover, if they can recover. The damage to the ocean and the environment beyond the beaches, marshes, swamps, etc. is equally incalculable. And it is going to happen again, I am absolutely convinced that this is not the last time we will see this "mini-series" remade with a new cast.

There is a way that this kind of thing can be avoided. If the determination, political and popular, existed to make the United States truly energy independent we could reduce our use of fossil fuels to self sustaining levels within 15-20 yrs and have alternate sources of energy sufficient to reduce to almost zero, if not completely eliminate, the need for petroleum production within 50 yrs. There is no way that the energy companies, as they operate today, are going to make this an easy or attractive proposition. Corporations have at least one thing in common with actual people, survival instinct. They will resist with everything that is within them any threat to their existence and this is the single biggest threat that the oil and fossil fuel industry perceives. A true transition to clean, renewable, American power threatens the powerful interests in the status quo.