Our communities must eliminate oil spills, mine cave-ins, and contaminated air for our children and grandchildren to survive. Recent news stories have described the recent disasters involving carbon products. Let us look a little closer.
Why did recent BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico occur? One reason is the U.S. demand for domestic oil production. These off shore oil rigs are a major source for U.S. oil production. How do we prevent such a disaster? One way would be to stop off shore oil well digging. If a major source U.S. oil production is closed down, the price of gasoline and other petroleum products will rise substantially. Off shore oil production is major source of oil world wide. Consumers would choose lower energy costs over stopping off shore oil well production. Today, we can not afford to throw out the baby with the dirty bath water.
The problem at the BP site was the emergency system for stopping oil production failed to work. First, why did this fail to stop oil pumping? If the system is a reliable and safe way to automatically stop oil pumping, there must added requirements for frequent testing of these devices. In any event, the oil producers must provide fail safe methods for stopping oil production regardless of the cause of the leak.
Who will pay for the damages caused by this huge oil spill? Will it be a repeat of the Hurricane Kristina damage payments that took years to be paid , if at all?
As new electric devices are devised, the demand for electricity will increase. As long as carbon products are our sources of energy, coal mine cave-ins, oil spills and contaminated air will be constant threats to your lives. We must have safer forms of energy. Solar and wind technologies are being developed that reduce the need for carbon products. Studies by leading universities show that wind and solar production are required, but at this time in America these energy sources will never provide more than a fraction of the energy production we demand. We need a additional sources of energy. In France, over 80% of energy demand is fueled by nuclear plants. All U.S. submarines are fueled by nuclear power. For many years we have been safely placing our Navy sailors next to atomic power. Nuclear power is a source of energy that can eliminate the use of carbon products for producing energy. Only by substantial increases in the development of nuclear power can we eliminate oil spills, mine cane-ins, and contaminated air.