BP did it for us: Our choices make disasters inevitable in the pursuit of petroleum
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Murphy's Law, Version 11,983: If it can happen, it will.
The blowout on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico was absolutely predictable. It was bound to happen one day. Just as a single-hulled tanker was bound to end up on the rocks in Prince William Sound.
There is a fundamental reason these disasters happen: Our energy habits create demand for cheap liquid petroleum. To ensure we meet that demand, we elect politicians who allow unsafe practices. If we really valued safety, we would elect politicians who put in place and enforce safety regulations.
Instead, we as a society allow these disasters to happen ... so they do. And when they do, we cry piteously for someone to fix the problems they cause. We look for someone to blame -- other than ourselves. We long for the day when things will return to "normal" -- when we can go back to driving demand for oil into the danger zone.
Example: Legislators from Louisiana still profess their undying allegiance to off-shore oil drilling "so long as it's done safely." But doing it safely would cost a great deal more than they've become accustomed to paying. So the illusion goes on that we can go back to "normal" because no one is being honest.
The surge of liquid crude into the waters of the gulf is only a highly visible manifestation of a much larger societal problem. The enemy is us. It is our choices. It is the energy-squandering system that produces the American "way of life" and its imitators across the globe.
Several decades ago a paper published in Science magazine showed that the energy spent to make a soft drink in an aluminum can was about 800 times the energy available in the drink itself. When we humans existed as hunter-gatherers we had to get more energy from our food than we expended in getting it. We would die if we didn't.
First Published June 20, 2010 12:00 am
