A Terrible Way To Learn: The Gulf Oil Spill Two Weeks Later

Over the past two weeks at Green Living we've been paying a lot of attention to the disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. We've been scanning the news daily to stay up-to-date on all developments and we've been using our Twitter and Facebook accounts to publish articles, blogs and breaking news.

The irony of this recent oil spill is the timing. It came just four weeks after Barack Obama announced he would end the moratorium on offshore drilling. Today, 16 days after the oil spill began, we are learning a valuable and horrifying lesson about the human and environmental costs of our global addiction to oil. With 11 lives lost and potentially thousands of barrels of oil spewing into the sea before this is over, this is a lesson nobody, particularly the oil industry, ever wanted to learn.

It's hard to imagine the damage being done at this very moment. Unlike a spill from an oil tanker, we can't accurately predict when the oil will stop pouring in to the ocean. The current situation presents environmental challenges never seen before. Not only do we not know when the oil will stop, but containment is proving extremely difficult.  Today, an experimental containment dome is arriving at the spill location and offers hope that it may be over soon. However, officials have stressed that the dome has never been tested before and there is a high risk of failure.

Again I can only think of the hard lessons being learned right now. Earlier this week Canada's government showed that it was paying attention to this event. Environment Minister Jim Prentice announced that Canada will not allow offshore drilling unless oil companies ensure they meet very high safety standards. While many of us would like to see an end to offshore drilling, these new regulations show that the government of Canada is learning something from the current situation.

For now all we can do is wait. In the coming days and weeks we'll begin to see the true nature of the damage being done in this tragic environmental disaster. Hopefully it will give us all a chance to reassess our addiction to oil and other kinds of unsustainable consumerism.