Boztopia.com

Read what Joe said here and here.

I don’t blog about environmental issues very often, not because I don’t care and am not passionately concerned, but because with only so many hours in the day and so many issues to focus on, I go with my strengths, and leave the expert blogging to folks like Joe or Brian over at S&R. I can’t tell you all the ins and outs of why cap and trade sucks, or how we can effectively spin up wind, solar, or geothermal power to come to market. But what I can tell you is that if we even consider the idea of drilling offshore or opening our wildlife reserves to oil pipelines, we’ll be destroying even more of the environment and empowering oil companies to even more record profits–and we won’t see a dime’s worth of decrease in gas prices. Oil prices are being spiked by a combination of several things:

• Irresponsible speculators pushing up prices in order to make bank off the sale of future oil contracts. Just like the housing bubble and the tech bubble, the same group of Wall Street douchebags is artificially increasing the value of a commodity to ensure quick profit, no matter what kind of lasting harm it may cause to the financial sector or the world at large.
• Increased demand from developing nations such as India and China who are in a race to catch up to the West in terms of living standards, with results such as China’s carbon dioxide emissions now exceeding the U.S.’s. Countries with health and safety standards so abysmal they make us look like a regulatory empire aren’t going to let a little thing like Peak Oil stop them from going balls-out in their quest for modernization.
• And, lest we forget, an endless war in Iraq that has led to permanent bases and garrisons designed to ensure the safety of those precious no-bid oil contracts. We’ve turned a nation into an abbatoir just to keep the pumps flowing and the SUVs filled up. If we’re willing to do shit like this, a little thing like drilling in wildlife reserves ain’t no thang at all.

I hear a lot about nuclear power as an alternative. If I had faith that we could bring plants online that could be operated and maintained safely, I’d support it. But it will not only cost billions to do so, but said new plants will come online with undoubtedly the most minimal safeguards and standards for disposal, ensuring we’ll have another Three Mile Island times ten on our hands before long. It’s pretty much a given that if John McCain has his way, we’ll see billions in taxpayer subsidies for nuclear power, and absolutely no oversight in how it’s spent.

The only way out of the oil crisis is to go all the way–people are already starting to change their behaviors and habits now that gas is at $4 a gallon. This may be the tipping point that will get a mass movement in favor of smaller cars, better fuel efficiency, new public transit programs, smart growth, and so on. We have the political will, the initiative, and the support to succeed in weaning ourselves off our oil addiction and implementing new solutions to improve both our economy and our planet’s health. Opening up our shores and our wildlife preserves to oil drilling would be a stopgap at best, a backslide at worst, and a dreadful failure to address both our endless hunger for cheap gas and the resultant destruction of our planet.

The old ways do not work. We need to try something new.