Clean Up Earth

I guess my comments about the Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico are long overdue.  This site is named Clean Up Earth, and we can’t do much cleaning up with a big oil spill in my back yard (I live in Texas).  I want to start off saying that I’m a conservative politically, but there are some things that I agree with each party on.  Historically, democrats have been the party that has led up the environmental think tank, but slowly, the conservatives are jumping in.  If we keep our reliance on oil, the US will not advance, and will eventually decline as we run out of oil if we don’t place an importance on alternative energy now.  At the same time, we’re giving terrorist countries our hard earned money, which they could, in turn, use to fund terrorist acts.  However, if we decide to continue to drill off the coasts, we will have these big oil spills polluting our waters for a long time.

Why is it taking so long to Cap the oil spill?  Simply put, it’s in over a mile deep water.  You can’t send a mission of divers down there to simply cap it.  You have to have some strategy to cap it.  They are bringing in an oil containment dome to try to cap the oil spill.  It is extremely heavy, and will be dropped from above the oil spill to hopefully cap the spill.  You can see how the dome is supposed to work at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIPYlK08gnI

Obama’s stance.  Well, as he stated today, it’s time to roll back “billions of dollars in tax breaks and use the money for clean energy research and development.  Now the reason I mentioned that I was a conservative earlier is to give you a framework of where I’m coming from.  I don’t agree with democrats on many issues, but this is one issue I definitely agree on.  We have to stop our reliance on fossil fuels, otherwise accidents like this will continue to happen.  Plus, the US will not be a super power in the future if we are not on the forefront of these new alternative technologies.  It is very important that we start going into the direction of alternative energies now, or suffer the consequences later.  We have a plethora of alternative energies waiting to be explored, if we just take the step to research them (natural gas, nuclear power, wind farming, solar power, geothermal, etc).

Hurricane season.  As we all know down in the gulf of Mexico area, Hurricane season is quickly approaching.  What’s worse, is that this is supposed to be a bad year for Hurricanes.  Now, that remains to be seen, but regardless, at least 2 or 3 will enter the Gulf of Mexico region.  Well, there is good news and bad news.  Weather can disburse the oil slick and make the damages lessened.  However, some of the oil slick will likely follow the hurricane to shore which could be an environmental disaster for wherever it makes landfall.  Not to mention, if they don’t get this capped before the first hurricane comes through, then this could be a mess for a long time.

In conclusion, if we don’t start converting to alternative energies, we will just have to live with the fact that we’ll be dependent on other countries for oil, we’ll have to live with oil disasters off our coasts, and we just won’t advance technologically as a country.  So, it’s our duty to start heading in the direction of cleaner, safer alternative energy technologies.

Here are a couple of other cool weblinks to track the oil spill and progress:

http://oilspill.skytruth.org/

http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/05/view_live_video_feed_of_bp_gul.html