On April 20th, the oil drilling rig Deepwater Horizon exploded in a shower of flame and crude oil. Two days later, the vessel slipped below the waves of the Gulf of Mexico and began to pour the crude from its ruptured pipelines into the sea. As I write this, what was dubbed a “leak” is now a 42,000 gallon-per-day unrestricted flow of toxic oil into America’s most productive and valuable fishery. The oil slick has made landfall in Louisiana, is nearing Mississippi, and will soon come ashore in Alabama and the Panhandle of Florida. It now threatens to become the largest environmental disaster of its kind in the history of the United States.
The Deepwater Horizon took the lives of 11 of its crew and seriously injured 17 more, but the damage and loss will continue as the oil spreads, destroying wildlife, habitat, and crippling the economic welfare of the already fragile Gulf Coast economy, only now recovering from Katrina after 5 years of painstaking labor. For me, and other ocean loving Hawaiians, this is nothing less than a nightmare—a horrific, worst-case scenario for which BP Global and the U.S. Government were completely unprepared.
This disaster comes on the heels of President Obama’s recent announcement of the expansion of offshore drilling along the East Coast. Only two weeks prior to the sinking of the Deepwater Horizon, the President opened new coastal areas to offshore drilling in an attempt to feed this economy’s insatiable hunger for oil. From that announcement to the present, we have seen the way in which such exploratory drilling can cost this country far more than the price of an imported barrel of oil. A short-term solution, with a very short-term decrease in prices of fuel at the pump results in billions upon billions of dollars in cost and losses when just one of these drilling platforms experiences a critical failure.
But this is about more than BP’s failure and the spill in the gulf. April has been a tragic month which has reminded us again and again of the costs of fossil fuels in general—a cost measured in lives and treasure. The month began with the worst coal mining disaster in 40 years. On April 5, Massey Energy’s Big Branch Mine in Montcoal, West Virginia claimed 29 lives. On the 29th of April, Massey Energy lost two more coal miners in a roof collapse in Hyden, Kentucky.
Only 8 months ago, Australia experienced its worst oil drilling disaster with the Montara oil spill off the northern coast of Western Australia. With 1.2 to 9 million gallons of crude spilled, it may pale in comparison to the natural disaster that aces the Gulf, but it continues to illustrate that these events happen all too often.
As I write this, I am listening to a television news interview with the executive director of an environmental group based in Mobile, Alabama. She says that the oyster and shrimp industry may take 20 years to recover. Literally as I write this, the Coast Guard warns that the wellhead may rupture, increasing the flow of the spill to 100,000 barrels per day. This would exceed the volume of the Exxon Valdez disaster of 1989 in less than three days—and would still require weeks to contain, making it worse than Saddam Hussein’s intentional oil well destruction of the 1991 Gulf War. As I write this, families in West Virginia are still mourning the 29 miners who died in the Upper Big Branch mine explosion—miners who gave their lives to feed the economy’s unrelenting hunger for nonrenewable fossil fuels.
With all of these massive events and their impacts – impacts which may change the economic future of whole regions of the United States – it is easy to feel helpless. But there are rational solutions. Solutions which are affordable, safe, and genuinely viable alternatives to this continued reliance on a fuel source that kills, poisons, and now threatens to end a whole way of life on America’s Gulf Coast. The alternative is solar. Clean, green, renewable, solar. With photovoltaic cells made in the United States, it is possible for this country to not only become energy independent, but to become a world-wide leader in renewable energy.
The Deepwater Horizon disaster is tragic, but it has the potential to change the direction of politics in this country for the better. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the governor of California, came out this afternoon with an emotional statement reversing his opinion on drilling off the shore of California. The President has put a hold on the policy announced in the weeks before the disaster, and many Americans finally see that fossil fuels can have an impact which is very real and very close to home.
There is still hope for a future without disasters like these. With solar power, we can move beyond this dangerous, foolish addiction to fossil fuels and make a better world for ourselves and our children.
I know this to be true.
Alex Tiller
CEO, Sunetric
