as with much, it is indeed the environmentalists fault.
It's *all* of us. EVERYTHING we do revolves around oil. Oil put the seed in the ground, oil allows us to harvest it, transport it, refine it, package and sell it. We're consuming so much there's no way to go back to animal-powered farm tools. And then oil gets us to the store to buy it - it powered your car, lubricated it, and even went into the tires. Oil made the plastic your kid's toys came in, and the plastic bag you put it in to take it home and carry it inside. Oil lets us turn our lights on, if not because it powers your electric service, it allowed you to go to the store and buy the lights in the first place.
Our world is what it is because of oil. Oil is products. Oil is ENERGY. We need it in order to keep our world as it is.
We need it.likewise, drilling way way out in water so deep it freezes (see the first failed capture attempt)
so hostile that that depth exceeds experimental, instead of drilling near shore or on shore where with existing and proven techniques,
this sort of thing could never have happened.
Supply and demand. BP and all the other oil companies go and get it. And not only do we want this oil, we want it *cheap*. There was oil under the ground so we went and got that. There's still oil underground but it's not so easy to get, so now we go get it from underwater, from sand... and it all comes with risk. Everything has risk. And everything at one stage or another was experimental. Oil didn't come with an instruction manual on how to turn it into gas, plastic, toothpaste... we tried things and hey look we made it into blah. We can only try to minimize risk, and when things don't go as planned, have things in place to try and address that. You don't plan on getting into an accident with your car, but you wear a seat belt (hopefully) and perhaps your car has airbags, and you have crumple zones and blah blah blah. Sometimes they don't work as one would hope. And so, here we are, a leaky oil pipe. Because we need oil, and they went where the oil is, where it's cheap to get it. "Drill, baby, drill!"
And I'm right in there with everyone else, from when I buy my groceries to when I drive to work to when I fly around the United States solely to earn frequent flyer miles and increase my status in the airline's program.
oil will be with us until the end of the earth.
I completely agree. Eventually, at some point, oil is going to become so difficult to obtain that obtaining it makes no sense, and in the ground it'll stay. Hopefully we find some alternative first, because if we don't, get ready for the world to flip over like we've never seen. It'll make the housing bubble / stock market tank / increased unemployment rate / bank bailout nonsense look like a field trip.
We are a world based on oil. And we can switch to electric cars, hydrogen fuel cells or whatever, but we are going to still need oil.
And now I submit this post, take my plastic-encased phone off the charger, go to gate A72 via the tram to take the jet aircraft back to Seattle, and then get in my gas-powered car to drive home where I'll set my alarm, brush my teeth and get some rest for tomorrow's work day...
... all thanks to oil.
//A
(The comments, views and opinions in this post are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Microsoft.)
