by Jonathan Hiskes
This is bad: The oil rig
that has been burning in the Gulf of Mexico since an explosion on Tuesday has
sunk, CNN
reports.
The human cost: 17 workers injured (3 critically) and 11 missing.
The Coast Guard is searching for them.
The ecological cost: Crude oil is leaking from at a rate of about
8,000 barrels per day, Coast Guard Petty Officer Ashley Butler told CNN. The
Coast Guard expects possible leaks of up to 700,000 gallons of diesel fuel “but
can do little to protect the environment until the fire is out.”
(Decommissioned oil
rigs are sometimes deliberately sunk and become fish habits, but this one
obviously wasn’t decommissioned.)
The financial cost to Transocean, the Houston company that owns the
rig, and BP, which leases it: Don’t care. The hell with them.
The political cost: This makes President Obama’s recent decision to
significantly
ramp up offshore drilling, appear, well, more stupid. The real test is
still whether
his concession wins enough Senate votes for a clean energy bill.
The timing: Happy Earth Day, Gulf of Mexico!
To repeat,
the costs of fossil fuel-related disasters need to be part of our national
energy conversation. They’re all the more reason to kick our fossil-fuel
addiction. They’re all the more reason to replace fuels that come from hell-below- ground
drilling and mining-with fuels that come from the heavens-wind and sun rays and
tides.
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