Of course everyone is upset by the disaster in the Gulf and nobody more than the families of those who were killed in this terrible accident. And they seem to have been ignored, haven't they? In the national news they are simply referred to as the 11 dead. I'm sure they had names.
Of course the environmentalist groups are demanding a halt to all off-shore drilling and there is a smaller but just as vocal a group that demands that we continue. What to do?
It seems to me that within this country there are those with the technical skills and great minds to minimize the risks of this kind of drilling. Yes, it would take money to develop the procedures and manufacture the machinery needed, but the technology could then be sold to other nations that are now drilling without even a clue as to how dangerous it is. C'mon, we went to the moon once, we should certainly be able to develop a very safe method of off-shore drilling. And we should stop drilling until we can prove to ourselves that it is truly safe to do so. (BP made a quarterly profit of $6.1 Billion. Surely they can contribute to these developments.)
Apparently, the technology for this is a known thing and used in all Norwegian off-shore rigs, which have never had an explosion. It costs something like 500K, though, which is undoubtedly beyond BP's capabilities.
ReplyDeleteNorway? That would be one of those 'socialist' nations, wouldn't it? The government there probably makes them use those darn expensive things. No freedom at all!
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