Yes

Our possessions define who we are. That is what the advertisers want you to think and to a certain extent it is true. I've seen two car commercials which ridicule people who use excuses to buy luxury items and then they proceed to sell their new luxury item! Are we so asleep that we fall for that?! How did we get to this point? Back in the 1950's, the US had emerged from World War Two as the only major power to be virtually unscathed. It had spent the war years using it's huge manufacturing capacity to outproduce the axis powers, and now it was time to embrace consumption. In the 1950's, marketing was relatively simple. There was a prevailing attitude of conformity, and people were hungry for consumer goods in this time of prosperity. As the 1960's arrived, young people in particular wanted to express their individuality, and for a while, marketing became a much tougher challenge. Eventually, though, it became clear that the consumer could simply buy their individuality! Pretty soon, everything was for sale.
The cigarettes you smoked and the car you drove supposedly told everyone what kind of a person you were, based on the image portrayed in advertising. Since then, advertisers have become masters of "creating the need", and we have become consumers, first and formost. In our search for individuality, we have skipped introspection and bought our images off the shelf. Our pile of products usually fails to fill the void, and some people even end up in a cycle of depression and spending.
When we think of consumerism, we probably think of gadgets and cars, but we also spend millions of dollars each year trying to keep up with the neighbours. Hopefully these tough times will give us an opportunity to reflect on what really matters to us, and maybe we won't be so easily persuaded by the advertisers. For example, every year we fertilize our lawns, irrigate with sprinklers, spray the weeds and bugs, and of course cut the grass every week - all so that we can have the perfect lawn. The commercials help to give us something to aspire to. Let's break that down. Our fertilizer makes the grass grow faster, so we have to trim more often (with a shiny new ride-on mower, no doubt). The pesticides often kill more than the aphids, and runoff from pesticides and fertilizers poison rivers and probably our own drinking water. All that can be expensive, too. Is there an alternative? There sure is!
If we can break the advertising spell while money is scarce, maybe we can begin to really think for ourselves again.

The Big One

I thought I would run out of things to write about the latest oil disaster, but one recent report suggested that the volume of oil released is now equal to an Exxon Valdez spill every 3.5 days. Many think that the original leak has expanded as the damaged infrastructure has worn away. This problem is far from under control. A calamity is unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico. Some recent images of the oil reaching the Louisiana costline can be found here.
A disaster of this size is unparalleled. The environmental damage will last for decades, and will be catastrophic for marine life (and the fishing and tourism industries).
The Gulf of Mexico was already polluted. A similar oil well blowout occured in 1979, and pollution from sewage and fertilizer run-off created a dead zone in the region of 8000 square miles. This source states that annual pollution loadings can be:
* over 800,000 tons of nitrogen
* over 200,000 tons of phosphorus
* 100 million tons of dredged sediments
* over 2,000 tons of toxic substances from coastal industrial and municipal sites (four of the top five states in the U.S. in total surface discharge of toxic chemicals are Gulf States - Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas)
* approximately 1,000 tons of pesticides from coastal agriculture
* over 6,000 tons of produced waters from near-shore oil and gas platforms
source
We are killing the oceans, or at least big business is doing it on our behalf. They will continue to do so until we react strongly enough to this kind of news. Sure, you can stay away from BP gas stations, but where will you go? The Chevron next door?
Profit is everything to a corporation. While there is profit in pollution, it will continue.

The Cost Of Progress - Part 2

By now you've probably heard that the surface area of the "spill" has grown rapidly over the last few days. This disaster will be a headline grabber for the days and probably weeks to come, as it should be. A year from now, most of us will have forgotten about it, or at least consider it a past event.
In 1989, 11 million gallons of crude oil spilled when the Exxon Valdez ran aground. Despite clean-up efforts, the contamination has continued to prolong the disaster over the following years. Similarly, the legal battle continues to this day.



Of course, Exxon and BP are not the only oil companies tied to pollution disasters. Chevron partnered with an Ecuadorian oil company to tap the oil reserves of Ecuador. The scale of pollution left behind is thought to be anywhere between 10 and 30 times worse than the Exxon Valdez spill, and it appears to have been deliberate.


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Toxic oil wastes were dumped in 900 open, unlined pits which contaminated land and groundwater, and have been linked with many deaths and illnesses. The lawsuit was first filed 17 years ago and, as with the Exxon Valdez case, continues to this day.

With an underfunded Superfund program, the EPA struggles to clean up dangerous pollution events in the US. Superfund sites are located in dozens of major cities and many other locations. Almost all of us have "acceptable levels" of dangerous chemical pollutants in our tapwater. We desperately need to have a better set of tools to deal with polluters in this country, and for US companies operating overseas.

Take a look at my latest designs - Cost Of Crude and Growth For The Sake Of Growth

The Cost of Progress

As I type, up to 25000 barrels of oil per day are gushing into the Gulf Of Mexico. The explosion which destroyed the Deepwater Horizon oil platform also claimed 11 lives. Already we are looking for someone to blame as it becomes clear that the flood of oil from the sea floor is proving difficult to stop, and that contingency plans for a spill were inadequate or non-existent. At this point, it will probably turn out to be the worst oil disaster in US history since the volume of oil is not limited to the contents of an oil tanker.
Last week, the main proposal was to burn off the oil. Not surprisingly, this has had little effect. Even if it had, the fire would have produced an airborne cloud of toxins while the most dense chemicals would have dropped to the sea floor. You can read about in-situ burning here. The best clean up technique appears to be rapid containment and removal, but this has not happened.
What could have caused this catastrophe? This is central to the topic of blame. Obama sent SWAT teams to inspect similar rigs, suggesting to the public that terrorism could have been suspected. However, industry insiders and educated observers suspect a more logical cause.
"The problem is that when you drill into these formations, and then try to inject cement into the hole/gaps to prevent leakage, the curing process for that creates heat. That heat can, if not controlled, cause the gas to escape the frozen crystals. If a lot of gas is released all at once, as could happen during the cement/curing process, it can cause a blowout where the cementing is occurring, or force gas and/or oil up the pipeline to the drilling rig on the surface."
Our friends at Halliburton were involved in the construction of the well. There is an article here which covers their role. Halliburton is a "world leader" in cementing well heads.
"Halliburton performed a variety of services on the rig, including cementing, and had four employees stationed on the rig at the time of the accident. Halliburton's employees returned to shore safely, due, in part, to the brave rescue efforts by the U.S. Coast Guard and other organizations.
Halliburton had completed the cementing of the final production casing string in accordance with the well design approximately 20 hours prior to the incident. The cement slurry design was consistent with that utilized in other similar applications."
In 2007, the U.S. Minerals Management Service noted that over 14 years, around half (39) of the well blowouts in the area were due to cementing problems. Halliburton's cementing was blamed for an Australian blowout last year (the well leaked oil for 10 weeks).
Interestingly, Halliburton announced that it would acquire an oil and gas well fire control company less that a month ago. At the very least, this is disaster capitalism at it's finest.
So, who is to blame? It certainly looks like Halliburton had a part to play. The BBC asked a similar question here, where a point was made which most of us like to ignore. Many corporations operate with little concern for anything other than profit. We see that all the time. Would they continue to take such risks if the potential profits declined? In other words, if we consumed less, we would see fewer disasters. We have to accept at least a small portion of the blame.

You may remember the documentary, Who Killed The Electric Car. The answer to the question posed in the film explores similar issues. Real change has to come from the top and the bottom.