We still don’t know how the drama of the water pollution and the quotations of the Louisiana and the Florida is going to end.
Nevertheless we are all concerned, even us workers of the tourist industry on the Atlantic Coast of France.
Without putting all the blame on the oil industry, it seems to me that several aspects of the extraction and consumption of oil should change. That’s why:
A s long as oil cost approximately about twenty dollars per barrel (until the second war of Iraq), it wasn’t profitable to the drill two deep into the sea
- On the other hand, when its price doubled and even tripled (more than 70 $ the barrel today in spite of the crisis), the depth of the drillings was multiplied too
- In the case of the BP platform BP which just exploded, the 1500 m of depth of the leak)make very difficult the sealing of the hole or any other technique to avoid an ecological disaster assuming biblical proportions
- Even the American government seems powerless to impose to this oil company the enormous investments necessary to find a fast and effective solution, in spite of the fact that the exploded platform is in its territorial waters
- Let us imagine a similar accident in the North Sea, in one of the oil platforms in the British territorial waters: The oil spill would arrive to France’s Atlantic Coast, and the chances are high that the French government would be almost powerless towards a British oil company which works in territorial waters of the same nationality.
Remedies which seem feasible, for each of the points explained above:
- Doing all we can to reduce our oil consumption, thus preventing oil shortage to drive up prices to the point where oil companies dare to practice drillings that, although risky for the environment, are profitable
- Consequently, delaying as much as possible the inevitable increase in oil prices and spread it over a long period of time
- Pressuring authorities so that they adopt an effective international regulation to discipline the extraction of the oil, like the one adopted for international air traffic
- Realizing that we live in a globalized economy, where the national level is a useless to manage certain businesses. To put it bluntly, we need more Europe.
- putting aside any kind of parochialism, nationalism, which prevents the common efforts demanded by problems on a global or at least European scale.
Unless we want to believe that an oil spill stops in front of the national borders.
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