Via wecansolveit.org:

Last week Al Gore laid down a challenge to the US: generate 100% of all the country’s electricity needs from renewable sources within a decade. At the same time, Bush and his oil friends were pushing to expand off shore drilling for oil and continue the addiction that has made them rich, and made the US into the huge source of pollution it is today. Everybody agrees that even were these new areas opened for drilling, they would not produce a single barrel of oil for at least a decade. And since they would cost a lot of money to develop (leases need to be acquired, exploration & surveying happens, drilling rigs need to be built), what makes this likely to reduce the cost of fossil fuels?

Existing Leases
In fact, given that the oil companies only use about a quarter of the leases they currently hold, and that those leases cover 80% of all known offshore deposits, why isn’t the price already falling? Simple: it is cheaper to import oil that drill offshore, or at least it was. With prices rising, they suddenly see a way to make this local oil profitable - that means more oil company profits, not cheaper prices!

The Miami Herald has some other ideas about what is going on, and the timing of it. None are good for the environment, and none are actually good for the American people. All of them benefit a small group of oil companies, and their political champions who are about to leave office.

A Drop In The Ocean
The other big problem with the offshore oil plan is that there just isn’t that much there. According to the New York Times, the Interior Department estimates there to be about 19 billion barrels of oil available offshore. The Miami Herald article estimated about 20 million barrels are consumed each day in the US at current levels. That means there is less than three years worth of oil out there. And it takes 10 years to start getting it.

Worse still, any spill from one of these offshore drilling operations, or a tanker servicing them, would have a disastrous effect on tourism along the coastlines affected (and all of the top beaches in the US lie along those coastlines). And remember, some of these new areas are in the Gulf of Mexico, where powerful storms like Katrina are becoming more common.

There were claims after Katrina that no oil was spilled, but CBS News has a different story:

In May 2006, the U.S. Minerals Management Service (MMS) issued a report stating that as a result of both Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the number of pipelines damaged was 457, and the number of offshore platforms destroyed was 113, with a total of 146 oil spills recorded.

A study of environmental impacts written for MMS by Det Norske Veritas and Company and published March 22, 2007 told an even more detailed story.

As a result of both storms, a total volume of 17,652 barrels (or roughly three-quarters of a million gallons) of total petroleum products, of which 13,137 barrels were crude oil and condensate, was spilled from platforms, rigs and pipelines. 4,514 barrels were refined products from platforms and rigs.

If those storms are increasing in frequency and strength, building more oil rigs in the areas they affect would seem to be asking for more damage, and more spilled oil.

The Change You Deserve
So, we have seen two plans presented in the last week. One would push for new innovation and act to start getting the US off its addiction to pollution-producing fossil fuels. In doing so it would encourage innovation and investment in technologies that could benefit the world and a new generation of energy companies in the US.

The other option proposed would be to continue to support the addiction to oil, continue to support oil company profits, continue to pollute the planet and to continue to ignore the reality of the situation. By that time, there will be another “middle east” of renewable energy out there ready to sell technology to the US that it could have been developing for itself.

America, it is your choice: you can choose the path of greed, or be smarter than that and take up Al Gore’s challenge to move to renewable energy in less than a decade.

International
For those outside the US, how about taking Al up on his challenge and seeing if you can do better. Rather than an arms race, how about a renewable energy race? Unlike an arms race though, where there are no winners, in a renewable energy race everyone’s a winner!

Tags: al gore, drilling, gore, katrina, offshore, oil, renewable, rita, speech, spill

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