The Gulf Oil Spill

[squids]

He obviously still has a good reputation in Russia!

I'm already fantasizing about his car running out of gas on a visit to Siberian wells. Trapped on the tundra, miles from nowhere, freezing, concerned about his future......ahhh. I can sleep now.

[toddt]

A latecomer to this discussion, but it's a very sad situation and I'm heartbroken for all of you on the Gulf Coast who are affected by this ecological nightmare.

That said, I watched the senate hearings and heard about BP's appalling safety record, but it was nothing short of a multipoint system failure that allowed this to occur - you cannot just blame BP (though they and their bottom line should definitely be held fully to account until this has been made good) because in a thriving capitalist system such as ours it is unreasonable to expect companies to act out of anything apart from corporate self interest. It is for the government to set and enforce the rules so that firstly this stuff is less likely to happen, but failing that to make such a failure so massively financially unpalatable that companies are financially justified in spending much more to prevent it.

Think about the other corporate disasters that have occurred (such as Union Carbide in Bhopal, India - 15,000 dead) and how we could have leant from them, too.

However, and again, my thoughts are with you all.

Best
Todd

[squids]

BP's safety record is very poor compared to its competitors. Even as I speak, it's in a coop with others in the Alaskan pipeline with a majority share (and a majority responsibility for care of the line) and that's not looking great right now.

Even without gov't regulation, the oil industry has somehow managed not to completely kill every ecosystem or poison the well frequently. Chevron here has a great safety record. Having fed regs doesn't guarantee anything - an example would be how they oversaw the industry to begin with.

[ernstinen]

I apologize for this tangent, but it does apply to the use of fossil fuels and company safety records.

A story in today's L.A. Times: A company with a former top reputation that succumbed to the "bottom line" internal politics at the horrible consequence of human safety, Toyota, has a new bright idea: Lease their new cars (no one is buying them) at rock-bottom rates. Their gamble is that when the leases are up in 3 years, the cars will be worth more than every other corporate credit research firm thinks they'll be worth. "It could haunt Toyota 3 years from now" one analyst said.

To make customers feel more "comfortable" about their products, Toyota also announced recalls of 373,000 Avalon sedans built between 2000-2004 (my dad owns one). Why? Because of "improper casting," a component of the steering lock system can crack. When the Avalon is steered hard to the right, there is a chance that the piece will break, locking up the steering wheel and "increasing the risk of a crash." On top of that, Toyota announced they would recall 39,000 Lexus LX 470 SUVs built between 2003-2007 to fix "a steering-shaft condition unrelated to the Avalon."

My take: Believe what you want about government involvement in our safety, but I think it's necessary, IMHO. If the U.S. government doesn't protect it's citizens against rampant "profit first" corporations, we'd be in deep sh!t. The old "let them police themselves" idea is hogwash.

On the positive side, Chevy is coming out with the "Volt," Nissan the "Leaf," and other companies are following with hybrid or fully electric cars, with government tax credits large enough to make them affordable. If we want to wean off of fossil fuels, the technology is there. Let's move forward!

My 2 cents,

Ern

[mojobone]

Electric vehicles alone won't wean us off fossil fuels; about eighty percent of the electricity in the US comes from plants that burn coal. I'd rather have a coal plant in my neighborhood than a refinery, but there's still no such animal as clean coal; time to get busy inventing the hydrogen economy. Now, where did I leave my "Save The Humans" shirt?

[ernstinen]

Yup, hydrogen is the ultimate answer. Coal isn't. A new idea out here on the left coast is putting windmills on the existing oil platforms that are all up and down the coast. And they're going to build a huge wind farm out in the Mojave desert. --- As a matter of fact, my wife's company bought a huge chunk of land in Montana, far away from any towns, to build wind farms. And many new buildings out here where the sun shines are generating so much electricity from solar panels that they actually are selling their surpluses back to the electric companies!

Many clean energy options --- We need to "step on the gas" on every one until hydrogen-powered vehicles are viable.

Ern

[mojobone]

Hmmmm, don't know that wind is the ultimate answer; there's always the law of unintended consequences. We have a massive windfarm next county over (beautiful Benton County where the men are men and the sheep are nervous) and I hear rumblings that the 'mills are hell on birds, moles and gophers, and you can't farm organic anywhere near one, cuz all the earthworms are skeered off; probably an urban, er, rural legend, that.

[Hookjaw Brown]

They are building 44 HUGE windmills on the ridge above my house. The generators are so heavy that it takes two tractors to haul them up the road. The cranes that lift them to the top of the towers are even huger! Once these are built another 70 are going in. The problem with windfarms is that the transmissions lines usually are not near where the wind blows, so thousands of acres of trees are massacred to put in power lines.

[squids]

I'm pretty sure the answer isn't in one industry over another. We gonna hafta diversify in a big way. Maybe that's good - we don't seem to do well with monopolies.