After nearly three months (cf. A huge oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico ) it seems it is finally (almost) over. To the Guardian : ” BP held out hope today that it had finally brought America’s worst oil spill under control “.
But we shouldn’t rejoice too fast as ” executives and officials were warning that the nightmare wasn’t over yet. “ I am surprised it took both the United States and BP nearly three months to stop such a catastrophe.
Anyway, let us hope now that this huge fiasco will act as a wake up call towards less oil and more efficiency and cleantech.
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Indeed, I have been interested in energy and climate issues since I am 20 years old. This seven-year commitment led me to read a lot on these topics and among all these are “The Skeptical Environmentalist” by Bjorn Lomborg.
There it is written that the stone age didn’t stop because of the lack of stone and that similarly the oil age won’t come to an end because of the lack of oil.
Indeed there is still oil in the ground to be extracted, but it is more and more hard to do so as this (cf. my post on extreme oil ).
But with the meteoritic rise of cleantech and energy conservation measures a paradigm shift is occurring. Indeed, more and more people globally are slowly but inexorably switching to bikes and buses.
This proves that we may be able to wean off oil.
But time is urging as some believe that the physical peak oil already occured or that is about to occur soon.
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In any case, it seems that the BP oil spill is the definitive sign that with the oil age is over. As TreeHugger notes :
this failed charge signifies the arrival of Peak Oil.
Everyone was expecting a steep and sustained run-up in oil price would mark the onset of Peak Oil. Not happening because of the economic downturn. Instead we get a Gulf-wide gusher.
The road off oil will be long. It will even take decades -Two ? Three ? Five ? More ? – to slash our energy and material consumption to sustainable levels but I think it can be done.
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Back to the BP oil spill and to conclude, it seems many columnists and bloggers are thinking that this disaster is a wake up call towards less oil. Here is a selection of articles :
- New York Magazine : More Heat, Less Light ( The environmental movement learns the upside of anger…)
- Grist : Wake up, Obama. The Gulf spill is our big chance
- Consumer Energy Report : The Wake Up Call on the BP Drilling Disaster
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What do YOU think ? Will we answer this call or will this be just another missed opportunity like the IPCC previous meetings and Copenhagen ?
It just boggles the mind how long it took to finally make even the smallest amount of headway, BP left a lot to be desired in the whole affair. It is really hard to believe how a major cooperation like BP could be so incompetent. They have been doing this for over a 100 years! The only good thing from this whole experience is that it shows we give companies like them too much credit. So sad. The worst part of the whole situation is that is that so many people have had their livelihood pulled out from under their feet.
Hello Mindy and thanks for your comment.
Indeed, how come it took BP nearly three months to stop this. I hope an investigation will explain this to us.
On top of the socio-economical implications of this disaster we shouldn’t forget about the environmental ones. The mere thinking of this is frightening me…
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