A year ago this time, on the eve of Earth day, millions of barrels of oil began spilling into the Gulf of Mexico, accompanied by millions of gallons of a toxic dispersant banned for use in the U.K. (but still, apparently, okay to use over here). Both substances were disastrous by-products of a rush to profit by multinational corporations tied to our seemingly unbreakable addiction to fossil fuels. As was pointed out at the time and many times since, such catastrophic events are inevitable at this stage in the depletion of global energy resources. All of the easy-to-get oil is gone or spoken for, so expanding this highly profitable extraction industry requires brinkmanship of the type that has soured the waters of the Gulf beyond the sorry point to which they had sunk previously.
This is generally true of the extractive energy industries. Oil is being sought from ocean depths far more profound than either drilling or safety technologies can facilitate. It is being rendered from the tar sands of western Canada, where the very earth is being ground to squeeze every ounce of the precious fluid for export to the U.S., mainly. (As a result, Canada was recently our single largest source of oil.) The volume of global reserves is calculated based upon those deposits that are economically feasible to extract – as the price per barrel rises, more reserves enter the equation. The trouble is, the very act of extracting them from an exhausted mother earth causes as much environmental degradation as burning the oil in generators and vehicles.
Last year’s spill did teach us one valuable lesson: the energy companies fear nothing more than public opinion. Before the Deepwater Horizon explosion, cable television was choked with ads about “America’s Gas and Oil Industry” and all the jobs they were creating, not to mention BP and other oil companies touting their commitment to the preservation our environment and the development of renewables. When the rig blew, they vanished – Poof! No ads until well after the hole was plugged. Now they’re back again, though a bit more muted than before the disaster. They know their limits … and they know that they can only push the public so far. The real power is with us, if we can manage to use it.
We have an opportunity, right here in my backyard. Local landowners are preparing to play host to hydrofracking – another post-peak energy extraction method now destroying water resources in Pennsylvania and elsewhere. We need to make our voices heard now, before the industry gets a foothold and destroys New York the way the coal industry has riddled West Virginia.
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jp
