Forget the Gulf, Tap the Arctic!

Gulf-Arctic Cartoon, originally uploaded by rbtenorio.

In his speech on the Gulf oil spill on Wednesday, President Obama noted that oil companies are running out of options to drill undersea. He said that due to American demand, "oil companies are drilling a mile beneath the surface of the ocean -- because we’re running out of places to drill on land and in shallow water."
Well, Satan has a simple solution for this conundrum: Tap the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. He explains this strategy to the president in the latest episode of "The Devil Made Me Blog It."

Start Snorkeling, Stop Future Spills

The Seven Seas Beach in Puerto Rico presents an array of beautiful sights to snorkelers. Brightly-colored fish swim past undulating plants in coral reefs. Some of the fish swim in schools, others are more solitary, but they all seem to coexist peacefully, navigating the ridges of the reefs somewhat more expertly than the land traffic on Route 3.
My muse and I enjoyed these sights while vacationing in Puerto Rico last week. The variety of ocean life just a few feet from the shoreline is stunning, and tourists only need a set of goggles, a snorkel and fins to experience it. And there is one group of people that particularly needs to experience it: Anyone who works for an oil company.
The inspiring scenes we saw beneath the sea contrasted sharply with the sad images of marine life destroyed by the BP oil spill in the Gulf Coast. Based on what survivors from the blast are saying, the spill was caused at least in part by a corporate philosophy that focused too much on keeping costs down and too little about the risks of such a policy. For instance, an argument allegedly broke out on ill-fated vessel Deepwater Horizon because BP wanted to save time and money by using lighter water instead of heavier mud to keep oil from floating up.
BP and the Obama administration are now exploring proposal after proposal to contain the spill, and yet it seems something has been missing since the crisis began: An appreciation of the undersea world affected. When the cleanup work is done, BP should hold mandatory snorkeling trips for anyone who draws a paycheck from the company -- and other oil companies should do the same. Fostering an appreciation for the underwater world they work in might make companies more sensitive to avoiding future spills.

Humanity Still Stuck on Oil?

Gulf Oil Spill Cartoon, originally uploaded by rbtenorio.

What a sad sight to see in the Gulf of Mexico: The pollution caused by an oil spill that has dwarfed the impact of the Exxon Valdez catastrophe in 1989. (There has also been a human toll: the 11 BP employees who lost their lives in the explosion that caused the spill.) Is mankind condemned to such sights because of the car-crazed culture of the United States? Read more in the latest episode of "The Devil Made Me Blog It"!