On Saturday, June 26, joggers at Boulevard Park in Bellingham will see something rather unusual — people standing on the beach, drawing both a metaphorical and literal line in the sand against offshore oil drilling.
The event is part of a nationwide movement called Hands Across the Sand, which is organizing protests across the United States on June 26 to oppose offshore drilling and to promote alternatives.
According to the organization’s mission statement, the main goal of the group is to protect coastal economies and ecosystems.
In principle, I wholly support this kind of cause. I believe marine ecosystems are important for us for the natural resources they provide and the jobs they generate. Without a healthy ocean our lives would be significantly poorer.
With that said however, I am concerned the organizers and participants of Hands Across the Sand are being too nearsighted. When you get right down to it, we as a species need oil.
In the United States, oil is the cornerstone of our industrial infrastructure, our transportation network and many of our leisure activities.
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, in 2008 the United States was consuming approximately 20 million barrels of oil a day.
Nine million of those barrels were for motor vehicle fuel.
We have a huge dependency on oil, and whether we like it or not, we need to keep drilling in order to keep our society functioning at its current level.
Without oil, cars that get us to work and school could not run, the medical supplies that keep us alive would not be produced and the electronic devices that allow us to communicate so well with people across the globe would cease to exist.
Our society has based most of its production and transportation off the use of oil, and no viable alternative is currently available.
Again, I want to state that I support in principle the mission of organizations like Hands Across the Sand. This is not a BP press release, I am not a fan of Big Oil.
But certain harsh realities exist in our world, realities we need to incorporate into how we operate if we’re ever going to make real changes. One of those realities is that currently we cannot live without oil and the United States is dependent on other countries for that vital resource.
Alternatives need to be developed. The only problem with things like biofuels and solar energy is, ironically, they still need oil to get up and running. A solar panel uses oil somewhere in its production, and ethanol has to be processed using the very substance it is supposed to replace.
Oil is used to construct wind towers and river dams as well as any other form of sustainable energy generator out there.
The point here is that we need to keep drilling for oil and using it until the alternative power sources have enough money and resources invested in them so they can generate power without needing to infuse more oil in the system.
We will need oil in the short term and by the short term I mean probably the next hundred years, but if we can develop solar, wind and tidal power to a high enough level, then we might be able to overcome our addiction to the substance that poisons the entire coastline of the Gulf as you read this.
By all means, if you think offshore drilling is a problem, go out to Boulevard on Saturday and let your voice be heard. The protest is at noon.
Realize, however, that to reduce or eliminate offshore drilling will not be possible in the immediate future, especially if you want to preserve your current way of life.
If you want to make a real change, focus on finding ways to use oil for producing and developing sustainable energy technologies.
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