Time to act

The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico(/America if you ask Colbert) continues to be the big news all over the U.S., as it should be. Jon Stewart on Wednesday night did a segment on President Obama's speech. In that speech the President says we need to work on getting off of oil, well this was Stewart's response:

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If this isn't an excuse to get us off of oil I don't know what will. While I know that it will take sometime (we can't just change overnight) there is a way to start making alternatives more acceptable. Start by lowering subsidies to oil companies and increase the subsidies to alternative energy solutions among other things. There is increasing evidence that we are changing the global climate but not only that we are running out of oil it is time to instigate a change before we are forced to make a change because we run out of oil. It is time to act!!!!

Colbert rescues the Gulf region

Ok so not really but he is trying to do something!

A few days ago I was talking with several of my colleagues and we were talking about how most major occurrences have relief efforts to try to raise money. We couldn't think of one for the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Then a few days ago this episode of The Colbert Report aired.

If you watched the episode you heard Stephen Colbert mention that all the money from the Bing advertisement would go toward the Colbert Nation Gulf of America Fund. Well today I finally noticed that the link was up on the homepage for his show. This is a great thing and a good way to recommend that you give what you can to help out those who are suffering now or will be suffering later in the region. Just follow this link and please give what you can.

The Oil Spill

I have been trying to figure out a way to say this for a while now and this is the best that I could come up with. When I say the oil spill I figure most people know what I am talking about but if you don't lets just put it this way. In the Gulf of Mexico right now there was a well that blew up and has been spewing huge amounts of oil into the Gulf for months now, the oil has been reaching the fragile ecosystem that is the marshes and delta of the Mississippi River in Louisiana for the last couple of weeks causing images like this:



Those images are hard to watch and when thinking about the damages caused by this oil spill will be immense. This causes many people to jump to anger and want someone to blame and the most obvious culprit would be BP. For its part BP is taking a good bit of the blame for the spill having offered to reimburse all those effected and to pay for the cleanup. You could also argue that Haliburton and the company that made the fail safe are also partially to blame sure.

While those three are the most direct problem it could very easily be argued that the main culprit is the consumer demand for cheap oil and gas that has led companies to take risks and cut corners. If this oil spill has shown anything it is that oil production is not without its risks and the higher the demand gets for cheap oil the more likely it is that something like this will happen.

I know I may take some flack for saying what I just said and I will admit that I may have some personal bias with both my parents having worked for oil and gas companies for most of my life. I will also admit I have never been on the side of we need to get away from fossil fuels right now. But what I do hope is that this will spark some change in the American culture to hopefully add more of a push toward alternative fuels because if we don't start soon oil prices are only going to go up. One way or another alternative fuels are what will fuel our future