Oil rig disasters a preview of things to come

By Alexander Lange     9/9/10 7:00pm

The news on Thursday, Sept. 2, was big enough to warrant a column on energy. Yet again, there was an accident on an oil rig. To be fair, there were many differences between the fire that broke out last week on Mariner Energy Inc.'s oil rig and the massive explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig which caused the largest oil spill in U.S. history. But I'm not too concerned with the differences, because I'm not here to talk about regulation or safety practices. What concerns me most are the inherent risks and danger associated with drilling for oil, especially off the coast. These two incidents (it might not be right to call them accidents) reminded us all that we just don't have the means to make oil drilling safe, and that fact should be part of our impetus to change the way our country is powered. Given all of the problems which our country faces today, would you be in favor of creating millions of jobs, reducing the amount of money which we hand over to Middle Eastern countries, breathing cleaner air, leading the world, as a country, in the most promising new sector of research and production, and restoring American lives to the forefront of technology?

It's hard to believe anybody would turn those down. There's nothing negative in there, but that's exactly what we're doing as a country. Congress must act quickly to enact legislation which will lead America toward this bright future. Our current laws provide money for oil and coal companies to tear up the environment and supply the country with fuel which hurts the world. In years where these companies are pulling in record profits, the government continues to hand these companies giant subsidies. How can clean energy companies possibly hope to compete with fuel prices which are artificially lowered by the government? The truth of the matter is that they can't, and the conservative members of Congress should be outraged at this obvious "big government." Yet very few of them, if any, favor repealing the subsidies that give these companies a monopoly on the energy market while allowing them to make more money than ever.

We can't just blame Congress, whose members we seem to universally disapprove of, yet reelect every two years, for seeming to care more about the companies which fund their campaigns than the future of their grandkids. There must be a shift among Americans as a whole. Gone are the days in which we could recklessly consume electricity and gasoline. Air pollution and global warming are huge concerns, as is the fact that much of the money we spend on gasoline funds countries in the Middle East rather than jobs back here in the states. Knowing all that we do, Americans need to rethink their attitudes towards energy. Why does someone who commutes 30 miles to work by himself need an SUV? Why do universities (not to point fingers) insist on super cooling all of their buildings, even at 3 a.m.? Is it really so hard to turn off the lights when you leave a room? If we can change the way we think about these basic concepts, we can reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and start toward the transformation of our country to one powered by clean, renewable resources. The process will be lengthy, but that's all the more incentive to start now.

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Alexander Lange is a Will Rice College freshman.

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