Waiting for the other shoe

So here we are in the middle of August, BP has capped their runaway oil well and all is right with the world. (Man, that was tough to type with a straight face.) The media (and America’s) attention span being what it is these days, the oil spill in the Gulf is now officially old news, and to keep hammering away at it makes you look a bit out of it, sort of like a bad SNL skit. Or a really good one. And yet. . . .



And yet, I sit here waiting for the other shoe to drop. Yeah, they capped the well. The relief wells are not yet drawing off the oil to release the pressure, so there’s still a chance the original well will rupture far below the sea bed (below the cap plug) and turn a major oil spill into something far, far worse — and impossible to stop. Of course, that hasn’t happened yet. That we know of. I did get a kick this week — this week — out of Greenpeace sending a ship out there to check it out. Uh, guys? Where ya been? This all happened four months ago. You’re late to the party. Way late. It’s old news. But thanks for stopping by.

Let me tell you how old this news is: A couple of weeks ago, a tugboat hit a barely submerged well head up that way, in the Gulf, and it spewed oil like a big fountain in Vegas, right out there in the Gulf for all to see (if you just happened to be there). It hardly got any mention at all in the media. It’s old news. There are most certainly other wells out there, abandoned and leaking away like crazy, but no one’s going to bother to mention them. That’s really old news. I guess Lady Gaga is hogging all of the headlines these days until Michael Jackson does something interesting. Like breathes.

Of course this will happen again; that is, there will be other oil spills/leaks/whoopsies out in the Gulf, but here’s how the media works: If the next one isn’t bigger than this one, you might not ever hear about it at all. It ain’t news unless it’s new.

Meanwhile, before Lady Gaga walks in here and punches my lights out (or Michael Jackson does a very impressive zombie dance), how about we compare notes? If you have made any changes in your life in response to the possibility of peak oil, I’d like to know what you’ve done. We’ve lowered our home energy use (to 5 kwh a day) and I do a fair amount of practical cycling around town. If you’ve done anything in the way of prepping for peak, post it in the comments section here and we’ll talk about it.