Cornwall ON – As I write this there’s an awful lot of oil heading towards the Louisiana coastline; some of which has already advanced into pockets and is impacting wildlife and the environment.
So far very little has been done; and it looks like this will be even bigger than the Exxon Valdez in impact on nature. Sadly we live in a world where the term “Social Engineering” silently is at play.
Remember those Alaskan Oil fields the Bush government so badly wanted to exploit? Well when oil prices spike and a recession hits the economy it makes it politically easier to try and make such changes.
For years people have been warning against oil exploration in the Gulf of Mexico for this exact type of crisis.
Who will pay for the clean up? You and I. Not most likely BP; at least not enough. I’m sorry doesn’t cut it and is used too frequently in our society. I’m sorry is only two words. It’s the actions that count. The sad reality is that there is no way to make a company like BP and others truly accountable. Their lawyers will do their best to cushion the blow to them; the governments won’t do much either other than tax those whose voice is least heard to pay for this mess.
As we see now entire communities may have their lives changed forever.
“This is going to be the biggest economic disaster to hit Louisiana,” he said. “It could be 10 times the economic damage of Hurricane Katrina.”
Joe Melton, a crabber from nearby Reggio, said that at least there was work for those who returned after storm to St. Bernard, where almost all of the parish’s 27,000 dwellings were flooded. He said he never wanted to live anywhere other than these towns, strung along the boat-lined bayous, where new vacation camps stand next to rubble left from the storm.
“I was gone three years, five months, 10 days and 12 hours and I came back because this is my home,” he said, with tears in his eyes. “This makes Katrina look like a birthday party.”
And that Ladies & Gentlemen is where those living on the coast of Louisiana lie. So please consider that if you’re driving a gas guzzling SUV, or burning oil to heat your home, or poo poo alternative energy research or criticize electric cars.
It’s time for Canada to take its snout out of the Oil Sands and put it into sustainable research and better use of oil until we no longer need it. You can fuel cars on water; why aren’t we exploiting and developing that? We have some of the worlds greatest Hydro Electric resources; why is China leading the way in Electric car technology instead of us?
Why should it take disasters like what’s going on in the Gulf of Mexico and to the people of Louisiana to make this a discussion point?
It’s time to hold those accountable for tragedies like this fully accountable, and it’s time to stop putting the goals of certain multi-national corporations ahead of the needs of those that pay taxes day in and day out.
Jamie Gilcig – Editor – The Cornwall Free News
(Comments and opinions of Editorials, Letters to the Editor, and comments from readers are purely their own and don’t necessarily reflect those of the owners of the Cornwall Free News, their staff, or sponsors.)
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Good article, Jamie. However, I must beg to differ on one point. You CANNOT fuel your car on water, no more than you can roast a steak on your barbecue using charcoal ash rather than charcoal. Water is a byproduct of burning hydrocarbons (specifically hydrogen), just like ash is the byproduct of burning charcoal. Neither product has any energy left to give.
You can fuel a car (theoretically) on hydrogen, which can be extracted from water. However, this extraction requires electricity. However, nature, the laws of physics and chemistry, and technology being what they are, the process is not perfect, so you would use more power to generate the hydrogen than you would get from then burning it.