This has been happening for a little while but what the heck! As most of you know there was an oil leak that they are still trying to contain. Heading towards the sandy shores of America is a big pool of oil. Although they have been trying to contain the spill it is rather complicated in 5000 feet of ocean.
Most Americans want more drilling at home so we will not have to be so reliant on foreign oil. Yet when a boo boo happens due to a faulty piece of equipment the effects are of great magnitude. So does paying more for oil outweigh the accidents that can come along with drilling ourselves?
The first time I went to South Padre Island I thought it was so beautiful. One day while there we decided to rent dune buggies to run along the beach. Decked out in our new WHITE Padre shirts we loaded up and started "cruising" the long strip of beach that was not occupied. It was a blast! One thing that we started noticing about half way in was that all the sand that was flipping up on us was leaving black stuff all over our new WHITE shirts! What the crap was this stuff? Well it was the oil that the sand had soaked up from the last spill in the gulf. Needless to say the shirts went in the trash. It was a fun day, but the effects of that spill were not forgotten.
Now that story does not even begin to touch on all of the effects that a spill has on the environment. I guess I look at it like this. If you are going to go biking, you are supposed to wear a helmet at the least for safety. If you are dressed appropriately and have a bad wreck you can still get hurt. But the next time that you go biking you will probably try and protect the area that got hurt (if you can) before you head out.
There are risks with everything! Unfortunately sometimes we need something that hurts to remind us to be more careful. So in this case do the benefits out weigh the risks?
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I think our dependency on any foreign oil needs to be severed at all costs. Especially the oil with ties to the middle east. But I think we need to go one step furthur. We need to stop using oil as a form of fuel in just about every instance. I'm suprised no one has made the link between the deminishing supply of oil in the ground and the increasing instances is infrastructe destroying eartquakes. Oil is a great lubricant and the tectonic plates need the oil to glide across each other. Keep using up the oil and more and more fatal earthquakes will keep hapening.
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