{"id":2026,"date":"2010-05-03T08:07:50","date_gmt":"2010-05-03T12:07:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/?p=2026"},"modified":"2010-05-03T08:10:13","modified_gmt":"2010-05-03T12:10:13","slug":"what-the-oil-spill-in-the-gulf-says-americas-energy-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2010\/05\/03\/what-the-oil-spill-in-the-gulf-says-americas-energy-future\/","title":{"rendered":"What the oil spill in the Gulf says about our energy future"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>When I lived in Alaska, one of my drearier assignments involved covering the Exxon Valdez oil spill and the long years of clean-up and recovery.<\/p>\n

In those years, it became clear that oil industry executives followed a very simple calculus when it came to environmental protections:\u00a0 profits trumped safeguards.<\/p>\n

As recently as last November, a British Petroleum executive declared bluntly that off-shore oil drilling has been going on for decades “in a way that is both safe and protective of the environment.”<\/a><\/p>\n

Now the oil slick is pushing ashore in Louisiana and President Barack Obama is warning of a “potentially unprecedented environmental disaster.”<\/a><\/p>\n

The crisis in the Gulf raises so many questions about America’s clumsy effort to deal with energy issues that it’s difficult to know where to begin.<\/p>\n

But one place where we need to pause and rethink is the rush to re-embrace nuclear energy.\u00a0 America’s nuclear power industry was essentially derailed in 1979 by the Three Mile Island incident.<\/p>\n

A power plant in Pennsylvania came dangerously close (according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission<\/a>) to a “worst-case accident” in which “massive quantities of radiation” could have been released into the environment.<\/p>\n

In the decades since, the Chernobyl disaster offered another glimpse of the potential risks of nuclear power.<\/p>\n

But more troubling perhaps is the fact that so many questions about nuclear power remain unanswered.<\/p>\n

At facilities like Vermont Yankee (in Vermont) and Indian Point (on the Hudson River in New York), maintenance problems, small-scale leaks, the lack of disposal sites for spent fuel, and other environmental concerns have been chronic.<\/p>\n

This from a New York Times editorial published last month:<\/p>\n

Though Entergy has tried hard to market Indian Point as safe, clean and reliable, its public-relations efforts have been hurt by years of news about tritium leaks, faulty warning sirens, an unrealistic emergency evacuation plan and that disastrous cooling system, whose technology became obsolete decades ago.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Some advocates — including many environmentalists — say that it’s time to embrace nuclear power again, despite the fact that so many questions remain unanswered.<\/p>\n

But as we go forward, it’s clear that our national conversation about energy has to be far more honest and thoughtful.<\/p>\n

We need to accelerate development of alternative energy sources, including projects like the Cape Wind development approved last week off the eastern seaboard.<\/p>\n

Energy conservation has to be a bigger part of the mix, so that our reliance on risky energy sources can be reduced.\u00a0 We should accelerate plans to tap Canada’s massive hydro-electric potential.<\/p>\n

We should step up the kind of environmental and safety oversight that might have saved lives in the drilling rig explosion, and the recent coal mine disaster in West Virginia.<\/p>\n

When industry leaders assure us that their practices are safe, we should have independent agencies standing ready to ask tough questions.<\/p>\n

Above all else, we should look with profound suspicion on anyone who offers easy fixes or “drill baby drill” slogans.<\/p>\n

That kind of cavalier attitude has already wasted decades, which could have been spent weaning us off of foreign and environmentally risky sources of energy.<\/p>\n

We should have been developing better transportation systems, leaner industries and more energy-efficient housing.<\/p>\n

Instead, we were indulging in a cultural love-fest with SUVs, Humvees, and 4,000 square foot homes.<\/p>\n

I suspect that the cost of our dithering will be painfully obvious in the days ahead, as some of the nation’s richest fisheries and most profoundly beautiful marshlands are devastated.<\/p>\n

But the crisis in the Gulf may be a reasonable price to pay if it spurs us to accelerate our transformation into a smarter, more energy efficient society.<\/p>\n

PHOTO SOURCE:\u00a0 Wikipedia<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I lived in Alaska, one of my drearier assignments involved covering the Exxon Valdez […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2026"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2026"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2026\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}