The oil slick as seen from space by NASA's Terra satellite on May 24, 2010
On April 20, 2010 an oil well blowout caused a catastrophic explosion on the Deepwater Horizon offshore oil drilling platform about 40 miles off the Louisiana coast in the Macondo Prospect oil field. The explosion killed 11 platform workers and injured 17 others. We are now all too familiar with this tragic event. The damage this underwater oil gusher has caused, is causing, and will cause is catastrophic in nature. I will not get into the details here.
My question is, "How will this terrible tragedy be viewed 100 years from now?" Will it be remembered as the day when our habitat and civilization began to die, or will it be remembered as the day when we realized that we must change our life styles and begin the recovery to life again? It is our choice. If life is to go on, we must change the way we live.
We can simply blame Big Oil or the government and nothing will change. The greed of corporate America is too great. They will not give up huge profits so that the world can survive. Governments can make and enforce rules, but that is not enough to stop our slide towards destruction. Then who can change it? You can change it and I can change it. How? By living more simple lives. The only thing that will cause corporations to change is a reduction in demand.
The growth economy of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is no longer sustainable. No matter what we do, there is a finite amount of oil available in the earth. Within the next one hundred years, most of it will be depleted. The attempts to get the last of the oil out of the ground will only lead to more disasters like this one.
Yes, we need to find alternative sources of renewable energy. We need to tap wind power, solar power, geothermal power, and many other forms of energy. But even that will not be enough. We must reduce our demand for energy significantly. That means the return to a simpler way of living. It also means that we need to find ways to control population growth. The earth cannot support an exploding population. These are difficult times and they require tough choices. However the real choices are becoming much more clear. Change or die.
