The moral of the oil industry

Oil is a key component of the global economy for generations. The booming American economy since the Second World War has been made possible largely by the availability of cheap oil. But at what price? The recent oil spill off the coast of Louisiana has shown strongly that this economic prosperity has a price.

In reality, Americans are discovering some of the ugly truth about the oil spill damage and losses have been withPeople all over the world. Most of the leaks have led to accidents involving oil tankers and oil pipelines damaged. The worst oil spill was in 1979 and went under water in the Gulf of Mexico. And as with the existing BP oil spill, the Mexican state oil company Pemex and then unsuccessfully tried a variety of approaches to stop the oil spill in the Gulf. The 1979 release of water was very shallow Ixtoc (200 meters), but still took about a year to finish -and 140 million gallons of polluted beaches had before the Gulf of Mexico's northern coast and about 170 miles from Texas.

Two long lists of oil spills around the world on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oil_spills) can be found and EnviroWonk.com (http://envirowonk.com/content/view/68/ 1 /)

Perhaps the most striking example of irresponsibility global multinational oil industry, and in this case, the exploitation of an indigenous population that haswas in Nigeria. An independent panel of environmental experts and oil visit to the Niger-Delta in 2006 estimated that 1958-2006 is not less than 13 million barrels of oil have polluted the Niger Delta. To put this in perspective, that amount is paid to the oil like the Exxon Valdez, the equivalent of a size every year for 50 years. Amnesty International has published its report: "Nigeria: oil, pollution and poverty in the Niger Delta" in 2009. The report is a real eye opener andraises serious questions about the morality of our continued dependence on oil.

Add to this the enormous wealth that we are here in the United States literally giving the nations that we do not like, and one wonders when we wake up and realize that is our economic and environmental well-being of the creation of an alternative energy future. A future based on renewable energy alternatives to fossil fuels and emphasizes moving as fast as the largest andExtent possible.