Rethinking and reducing oil dependency
My husband and I awoke to the news that BP Plc is preparing for a key procedure to replace the containment cap over its blown-out Macondo well, which could temporarily cause more oil to gush into the Gulf of Mexico. This provoked a long and thoughtful discussion about global warming and what additional steps we can take to reduce out own dependency on oil.
Richard has published two though provoking articles in response to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and NASA photos depicting the effects of global warming around the globe. The first is titled Our addiction to oil: The cost in pictures and the second is titled Oil slick around Mississippi barrier islands. They provided much food for thought and evoked distress about how little governments, including our own Canadian government, are doing to address the issues and stop subsidizing the oil and gas industry.
The need to kick our addiction to fossil fuels as soon as possible is before us and “in our faces” so to speak. But is it possible to energize people the world over to embrace the green energy changes be made, without evoking the fear that arises from accidents like the Exxon Valdez and now the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico?
Images are so powerful and can become motivators for change. When my husband and I viewed the images by AP Photographer Charlie Riedel of seabirds caught in the oil slick on a beach on Louisiana’s East Grand Terre Island we were heartsick.
As BP engineers began their efforts to cap the underwater flow of oil, we feared our federal government, which is in bed with big business, might lift the moratorium and allow off shore oil drilling permits do even more tankers would be transporting oil up and down the Canadian coastline and increasing the risk of blow outs and spills. But on May 21st, 2010 Federal Environment Minister Jim Prentice said that the moratorium on offshore oil development in B.C. won’t be lifted any time soon, especially in the wake of the environmental disaster unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico B.C. offshore drilling moratorium stays: Prentice
The National Wildlife Federation has also released a powerful video titled Crude Awakening: BP Oil Spill/NWF Spec PSA. It was made as an unsolicited donation to the organization and drives home the impact of the BP oil spill on wildlife in the Gulf of Mexico by depicting a young woman’s perfect world consumed by oil.
Chicago-based Jane Fulton photographed more than a dozen people drenched in an oil-like substance while standing on local beaches. “When I started to photograph, people would come up and ask if they could be involved,” she said. “The pictures just flowed.” Fulton worked temporarily as a clinical social worker in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and says she can’t forget the wrenching photographs of oil-drenched birds. Crude Awakening (15 photos)
I believe it’s reasonable to expect our governments to ensure that industry complies with the laws of our land and to strengthen them. I believe we must insist regulatory oversight be put into place to protect the environment and must be stringently enforced. I believe maintaining oil as a energy resource and relying on oil based economies only serves to keep some people rich at the cost of the environment and the future ability of our beautiful planet to meet the needs of its inhabitants.
We must rid ourselves of the faulty economic model referred to as the three legged stool and the governance model founded upon it. The environment is grounds for all and without it we have nothing.
The fact that our western culture has placed a higher priority on economic growth than it does on environmental health can explain much of the present deteriorating state in which we find the environment and thus ourselves.
Will we ever understand our place on this planet and choose to live within the limits set by the biosphere? Perhaps, but not by using the “three legs of the stool” as a model for sustainable development. Why? Because it continues to place us [humans and our activities] outside those limits. And while we may be able to think outside the limits, we cannot live outside the limits. — Neil K. Dawe & Kenneth L. Ryan in The Faulty Three-Legged-Stool Model of Sustainable Development (PDF)
Motivated by the images the reality of the risks,and failures and our fear of worse yet to come, we must all live up to our personal responsibility to reduce our oil dependency in every way that we can. In this regard, Sandra Lee recently published an informative article titled Reducing your oil use saying, in part:
In the wake of recent disasters you too may be reconsidering the wisdom of an oil-based lifestyle. Petroleum derived products are all pervasive in our culture. To help you out, I’ve compiled a short list of ways to reduce oil dependence. Since you’ve probably already taken the most obvious steps, they are last on the list. Suggestions for digging deeper and fine-tuning are included first.
After a careful reading and re-reading of her article, I recognized that despite the many changes my husband and I have still have more changes to make.
Tragic events like the Exxon Valdez and the BP oil spill make it clear that it’s time for our governments and their oil and gas industry puppet masters to stop tinkering with energy policies, destroying the environment we all depend upon for survival and change our energy strategy – now.
Related articles by Zemanta
- Gulf Coast Disaster – Morning News Roundup, July 9 (switchboard.nrdc.org)
- Gulf Oil Spill Panel to Look at Root Causes (abcnews.go.com)
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Hi TiTi:
This is a thought-provoking post and I applaud your committment to look at how you can use less oil.
Here in our corner of England we try to be as green as we can be and out heating comes from a wood-burning stove and we burn sustainable forestry. But of course we run cars and travel by air so we still make our significant contribution to the demand audience.
The oil spill in The Gulf is just catastrophic but it’s amazing how, in really difficult situations, real human endeavour and compassion shine through.
I have just watched news footage of the Florida Coast where dozens of volunteers have carefully dug up 70,000 turtle eggs due to hatch next week. They have been put in special incubators and when hatched, will be released further up the Atlantic Coast.
Made me tingle with joy.
Smiles and blessings.
I live on a small island in a small and highly environmentally aware community. My husband and I have been committed to leave the lightest and smallest ecological footprint behind that we can. Thanks for sharing the turtles story. I hadn’t heard it. Like many I’m grieving the poisoning and destruction of this planet and the greed machine that drives the decision making. Hopefully we will experience massive world wide consciousness raising, and then set to work to do what we must do to reconnect with nature and make better energy choices.
TimeThief, I appreciate the clear view of current political reality you communicate in this article and the need for a change at the level of governmental oversight. This is an important perspective not to be forgotten. Thank you for touching in on this incredibly germane topic for this moment in time. The photos tell all. Thank you also for the mention of my article.
@Sandra
I’m a retired political and environmental lobbyist who has been very effective at the local level. I try to steer clear of politics in my blog but it’s almost impossible to achieve that. The corporate puppet masters pull the strings on those we elect to be good decision makers. Unless and until we topple the faulty three legged economic model this planet is doomed to be exploited and poisoned until there’s nothing left to exploit. Of that I have no doubt.
Your article is excellent. I looked at all those items and I saw other things that we could do so we are about to make some more changes. Thanks do much for publishing it.
As ironic as it might sound, taking the giant leap to rural life has made living an environmentally conscious life extremely difficult. We’re always struggling to find ways to lower our footprint on the Earth. Well, we’re having an easy time finding the ways, but we’re having a difficult time putting them into practice. Perhaps it’s the traditional old country mentality of the township we’ve moved into. Progression is slow, the green movement hasn’t had much of an impact. We’re just this year celebrating our second anniversary of the “no-idling please” projects around town. No-idling bylaws came into effect over ten years ago in the city we left behind.
On the oil front, we’ve been trying to reduce our crude consumption over the past couple of years (since fully moving into a rural environment)
The biggest method, and also one of the most difficult to achieve, is banning plastic from our lives. It appears you can’t buy hardly anything these days without it having some component of plastic. We believe plastic is the most environmentally UN-friendly product in the world. It’s a disaster to create (with crude oil as it’s base ingredient) it’s a disaster to recycle(using horrendous amounts of fossil fuels to accomplish) and it’s absolutely everywhere. There’s almost no getting away from plastic. We’ve been trying our damndest. It’s also damned expensive to live by other means. Whenever I have a discussion about reducing one’s footprint on the Earth, I always recommend spending a day recording how many times you touch something containing plastic, even stuff that doesn’t belong to you. For each time, record one ounce of crude oil (the amount used is far more than that, but one quickly gets the idea) consumed to make the product. At the end of the day add up the ounces, and you’ll be seriously amazed at how much crude oil you’ve consumed from morning to night. Multiply that by 365, it suddenly becomes a staggering amount of crude oil consumption…simply by one person. And then there’s all the plastic you DON’T see, the components in your stainless steel faucet, the components in a doorknob, the plastic ooating on the dust jacket of a book.
Our mission has become re-use and re-purpose, rather than recycle. If we must consume plastic in any way, we try hard to ensure that it is plastic we can keep around for a very very long time, and then, we ask ourselves “what can we use this for when it’s lived beyond its purpose”.
It’s a hard struggle, to be honest. It’s expensive, it’s restrictive, but in light of BP’s impact on the Earth these days, we find ourselves all the more eager to fight the good fight.
Thank you my friend, for the opportunity to reaffirm my own beliefs and to share in yours.
I also appreciate the links you’ve provided and am eager to go read more on those sites you’ve linked….and would be interested in any steps you and the Mr. take towards lowering your consumption.
This is the best and most comprehensive summation of the problem of the 21st century that I have read. As in most affairs the real problem hides, unrecognized, in plain sight. People are propogandized and persuaded by those whose interests lie in concealing the problem to ignore the looming iceberg ahead and when the tip of the berg gashes a hole in our ship, we direct our anger and and attention to the tip of the berg. The iceberg , of course continues on until it hits another ship and the cycle begins again. In short, plastics are the iceberg and gasoline only the tip. From the roofs, sidings, interior furnishings of our houses, our clothes, food containers and wrapping, and our cars, our roads, clothes, and billions of ball-point pens…and on and on! It staggers the imagination , but this is the real problem and the hypocracy of buying a cloth bag to bring all your plastic-wrapped products home from the grocery store merely makes one feel better. Thank you for showing us the monster hiding in plain sight.
I apologize for approving this comment and then taking so long to answer it. I have been extremely busy and not well.
I hear what you are saying. It seems that those who live in the country have challenges to face in this regard and you’re right it’s ironic. Where I live most citizens are without doubt environmentalists. We live in Canada’s and North America’s only legislated land trust (Islands Trust). Here our elected people have the primarily mandate of preservation and protection of the environment. Yes, where I live the environment comes first, much to the chagrin of a tiny minority who would prefer to see the area become over-densisfied and unsustainable so they can profit from chopping the islands into little tiny lots. For 35 years we have elected trustees who have upheld the preserve and protect mandate and our community plans and land use bylaws, despite the machinations of corporations headquartered in the US, corporations who had the tax breaks that tree farm licensed lands enjoyed for decades and then brought forward rezoning applications aimed to turn that land into residential land. Their rezoning attempts were turned down over and over again, and the commitment of the citizens to preserving and protecting these rare and precious fragile Canadian island ecosystems prevailed.
About 18 years ago our small community chose to become part of a regional recycling program. We already had our own recycling depot run by a non-profit and still have it. I’m happy to say that we find the combination to be excellent.
My husband and I are also into reuse and re-purposing and like you we are becoming more and more conscious of how many plastics there are everywhere in our lives. In many cases we have replaced plastic containers with glass containers. However, when I visited Sandra’s site and read the list I found there were other petroleum products we had not considered.
Like you we are doing our best to be good stewards and reduce our ecological footprint and can attest that it isn’t easy but being part of the solution helps us sleep better at night.
Thanks so much for the visit and your thoughtful comment.
Unfortunately, as long as we live in this ever-globalizing corpocracy, I don’t see much changing any time soon. I hope & I wish, but I don’t hold my breath. <:(
SIGH >>> I hear you. Don’t be discouraged – keep up the good fight.
Great and inspiring post. :)
The fact that the externalities of pollution as well as other harmful effects of oil dependency are making their way into the average citizen’s mind are asign that the incentives are changing and that the world is on its way to looking for oter sources of energy.
The one thing that I disagree about is the action asked of oil companies and the government. As of now, consumers are really much dependent on oil, and as long as this is the case, oil companies should continue to serve the people with their oil. Only a change i. the market will compel government and oil companies to pursue eco-friendly enery options.
Hoping you are well,
Sothos
Thanks for your positive feedback. I would like to expand a bit about the need to replace the faulty three legged stool economic model. We citizens do need to change our habits and preferences and when a significant number of us do that the decreasing demand will result in reduction of supply because the profit derived from exploitation will be reduced.
Unless and until the environmental component is quantified in dollar and cents a new model will not be adopted. Valuing ecosystems in financial terms through implementation of environmental accounting will place decision makers under far greater pressure to make responsible transparent decisions and be accountable for them.
Accounting for the depletion of natural resources and the effects on ecosystems that sustain our lives and the health of the planet is a key step in valuing and preserving them. Environmental accounting can be used for the management of environmental risks, and operational costs. Implementing an environmental accounting system makes business and financial sense in terms of cost savings, improved environmental performance, and minimizing environmental risk.
Implementing environmental accounting at all political levels from local and regional to national levels is contingent upon individual awareness in combination with action that reduces demand. Implementing a combined system of regulations and incentives aimed to minimize environmental depletion and degradation will lead to changing purchasing preferences and the re-shaping consumptive and destructive activities of every individual and business, because doing the right thing environmentally will then become the cheapest course of action.
Whew! I’m no economist and I’m not inclined towards mathematics and accounting but I do see that we need to implement a model that accounts for the depletion and degradation of natural resources and the effects of human activity on ecosystems.
Hi TimeThief,
Very inspiring real-world post. It is going to be a long time before we a are no longer dependent on crude oil. Until that can happen, I commend your efforts and will follow your example.
Thanks for your comment Jazz. Yes, we all need to “smarten up” and start doing our part to reduce oil dependency in each and every way we can.
shoebox [shesboxingclever] said: “As ironic as it might sound, taking the giant leap to rural life has made living an environmentally conscious life extremely difficult. We’re always struggling to find ways to lower our footprint on the Earth. Well, we’re having an easy time finding the ways, but we’re having a difficult time putting them into practice. Perhaps it’s the traditional old country mentality of the township we’ve moved into. Progression is slow, the green movement hasn’t had much of an impact. We’re just this year celebrating our second anniversary of the “no-idling please” projects around town. No-idling bylaws came into effect over ten years ago in the city we left behind.”
Has your city, done anything to improve infrastructure for: public transit, cycling or car sharing co-ops? Those can be major mechanisms to reduce oil car-dependency..especially single car occupancy vehicles.
I have lived in a household without any car since I was 21. 30 years later, I’m still fine. Yes, I’ve lived in cities all my life…with public transit. I returned to cycling at 32, more motivated to be more flexible where I can go whenever, instead of bound by just a bus, commuter train. Besides cars can’t go into really cool areas.
It takes some initial, mindful committment to live this way. But I don’t think about it much since I’ve been accustomed to car-free life for so long. When I do get a car ride occasionally from someone..I don’t take it for granted.
We do have to demand local urban planners to design new neighbourhoods that aren’t so reliant on cars. It is possible..we saw such places in Europe last month while on vacation and business.
The city of Vancouver now has 10% of people cycling for transportation on a regular basis. Copenhagen has the highest,…I think theirs is close to 40%. It’s quite a different feeling to cycle with many people…
My partner spent 30 years of his career at a major national oil firm before he retired. It’s interesting to hear directly from someone who understands the industry better and who also has an engineering degree. From an engineering perspective, it is not foolproof/leakproof/risk-free, to engage in underwater, deepwater oil drilling…anywhere.
As for oil tar sands: bad. It’s takes alot of energy to extract the oil from sand. Then one is left with the sludge..so where does one dispose of this?
And natural gas/oil field flares: just bad, polluting.
And the butane torch to carmelize the creme brulees? Good to only have brulees occasionally. It does release fine particulate matter. But chefs have to idea about this toy.
I’m not totally against plastic engineering materials for building components. It does reduce chopping down our forests.
So we should keep our petroleum only for construction materials (and other applications) that are to withstand the weather elements, for strength/durability over many years so that we can save other natural resources.
After all the tires, for bikes…come from petroleum. So we have to rebalance our oil dependency.
Shoebox [shesboxingclever], I am hopeful that change is occurring..now. In Toronto whenever there is a city-wide Toronto transit strike, it’s amazing to see how many hundreds of thousands of people who do use public transit, have to find other means during that time. Toronto subway and bus system is used by over 1 million per day. How’s that for reducing oil dependency??
@Jean
I hope you don’t mind that I edited your comment to add the correct moniker. It’s shesboxingclever, not shoebox. Reading your comment was encouraging but we do have a long, long way yet to go and rural places like the ones shesboxingclever and I live in do not have a large enough population to finance the establishment and maintenance of public transportation systems. Many people do bicycle in the gulf islands but many are elderly and/or infirm not able to give up their vehicles and adopt bicycle riding as a primary means of transport.
Of course, rural areas have different challenges.
The challenge is how to manage one’s life decisions over time of where one lives vs. other factors, including one’s health and the aging process at different times in life.
The strongest thing that rural areas might offer, if there are strong community relationships among people who help out one another regularily for transportation and other types of support.
It is better while one is still healthy and mobile to transition gradually to different travel mode arrangements and sharing with others, so that much later in life it’s not such a negative/huge adjustment.
Or move to a different area that’s closer to services.
A less oil-dependent lifestyle, does mean readjusting one’s expectations. ie. I don’t support the idea of many seniors still driving. It’s just scary..there have been a number of car accidents involving elderly folk who shouldn’t be driving at all.
I’m pleased that my 81 yr. father voluntarily chose not to drive at night nor on high speed highways…for the last 6-7 yrs. He just drives within a 20 kms. radius of his home in Toronto. They live near 2 different bus stops…a 10-min. walk. Grocery store is just a 5-min. walk. But he and mother are lucky, they have their adult children to help out for driving much further distances.
But then my father couldn’t afford to own and drive until I was 15 yrs. old. So public transit and occasional taxi was a way of life in a small Ontario city for us (6 children).
May we have the foresight to change gracefully over time so that we remain safe to ourselves and to others… not just driving, but practices that protect our environment, our health, etc.
Hi Jean,
The good news is that there are strong community relationships where I live, and I do believe carpooling has been going on here far longer than it has been going in suburbia.
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Dear TiTi. This is just an amazing article. So well written and comprehensive, which is of course your trademark. And the ensuing discussion is fabulous. Would have loved to have been a room with you presenting this post and all the commentors and had an in depth discussion, brainstorming. We already choose to share one car and use public transport as well, and bike and walk when we can too. But we hope to eventually live in small community where we can bike and walk all the time.
Thank you my dear friend for always creating more awareness in the world. I love you for it. …and of course more. Hugs and love, Robin
Thanks for the kind words Robin. We are doing the best we can do in this little corner of the world to reduce oil dependency as quickly as we can and hoping that others are doing the same where we live. It’s going to be hard to cause a turnabout, but the more conscious we become the better equipped we will be to become the change we want to see.
Love always,
TiTi
Thanks for an excellent post. I appreciate not only the detail and the wealth of references, but also your concentration on environmental issues without getting side-tracked into political finger-pointing. I also blog about environmental issues. Although I don’t have nearly the expertise and experience you do, I do try to keep my focus on what people can do rather than whom they can blame. I have bookmarked this post for future use.
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