Dependence On Oil Is Proving To Be Costly

We read the news or heard about it on television. News about the tragic oil spill that recently happened in the Gulf of Mexico, just off the Louisiana coast. That day on April 22, 2010, revealed to us that the United States and the world can no longer ignore the unsafe practices of offshore oil drilling.

Even for a society that is based on consumer sentiments, the environmental effect of an oil spill of this proportion is catastrophic from any point of view. Is the Oil Spill of 2010 a wake-up call for all of us?

As they say, history is doomed to repeat itself. On March 24, 1989, the Exxon Valdez was headed for Long Beach, California. While en route this tanker hit a reef in Prince William Sound and dumped approximately 250,000 barrels of oil into U.S. waters (Wikipedia).

The ship was carrying 54 million gallons of oil; 10 million gallons were spilled into the Prince William Sound. The consequences of this disaster are still felt today. Lives were wrecked, homes lost, and the accident caused many divorces.

But there might possibly be a difference between the two disasters. The Exxon Valdez had a limited supply of oil that it carried. With the oil wells in the Gulf of Mexico, the supply of oil is much harder to measure. The exact amount is not known.

The price to pay for the latest spill is going to be immense. BP is spending $10 million a day on clean-up (Reuters). The image of BP could suffer even greater damage. With the media at our fingertips, the public is more aware than ever of the potential damage (The New York Times).

Let us also remember those 11 grieving families that lost a loved one in this tragedy. Those 11 men paid the ultimate price, with their lives. The names: Aaron Dale Burkeen, Adam Weise, Jason Anderson, Karl Kleppinger Jr., Dewey Revette, Shane Roshto, Donald Clark, Stephen Curtis, Blair Manuel, Gordon Jones, and Roy Wyatt Kemp.

Unquestionably, we live more luxuriously than our predecessors ever dreamed of. But, the price to pay for this luxury is invariably more costly than we care to admit. Will the Gulf Oil Spill of 2010 change our decadent ways?