The Oil Is Still Spilling

President Obama spoke tonight. I watched him on TV, on one of the basic stations, totally free, with our special digital antenna picking up the signal. He talked about the problems in the gulf, the problems with offshore drilling, and the oil spill that has become known as The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill.

This Deepwater spill is a sad and ugly thing, as all the oil spills are. Nothing good comes from polluting the world we live in, this planet we call home. But this kind of dirty business goes on. Oil companies have their greedy drill bits buried deep into the modern world and the American way of life. The U.S. is the country which consumes--by far--the most oil. Using 2008 numbers from U.S. Energy Information Administration, the U.S. drinks down about 19 million barrels of oil per day. (China is the second place consumer, guzzling about 7 million barrels per day.) We use a lot of oil, which means we have to manage a lot of oil: physically get it, refine it, move it, ship it, import it, pump it, pour it, and so on.

Looking at the Wikipedia page for "oil spills," and then the page for "list of oil spills", I see that this most recent Deepwater Horizon spill is only one on a long list of oil spills. Billions of barrels of oil have been spilled and burned and wasted over the years--hundreds of spills--and Deepwater looks like it'll go down as one of the big ones.

Oil spills keep happening. Why is this? Well I am not an oil spill expert, but my ponderings have me pointing my finger at: gravity, entropy, carelessness, flaws in containment, and accidental occurrences. And there doesn't appear to be any end in sight with respect to oil spills. Perhaps we'll have to wait until we burn it all up and there is no more oil left to spill.

As I write these words, the toxic black gold keeps leaking out into the gulf waters. We've all seen the photos. Animals covered in black goo. People in clean-up suits doing the slow work of cleaning. Nature takes a lot of abuse. And it seems that a good bit of such abuse stems form the species with the name tag: Homo sapiens (or Homo sapiens sapiens if you want to get more technical). Our numbers keep growing and our problems never seem to end. But the good people are trying.

I think about New York City, the biggest city in our fair country, and yet it's a place where approximately 54% of people don't own cars and public transportation is widely used. I think about a friend I know, buying big bags of organic grains and riding his bike around all the time. I think about other friends I know, keeping their homes cool in the winter and warm in the summer because it's better for the environment and their wallets. A bunch of little things can add up and help. Of course a bunch of other little things can add up to do some harm. But the good people of the world know deep down what they have to do.

And all this Deepwater ugliness will be fixed, although it looks as if the spill has the potential to drag on for some time. And I hope that in this country, and in this world, people will move toward fuels and energies and machines and that are safer, more efficient, and less harmful to the environment. As for right now, I think I'll raise the thermostat a little higher, sweat a little more, and then go out for a bike ride, a little nighttime road meditation to cleanse my mind of oily thoughts and to ease the weight of the world.