More offshore drilling? Um, no thanks....

First, let me start by saying that I don't believe anything dealing with our planet and its future, OUR future, should have anything to do with politics. It's a humanitarian issue. Unfortunately, politics does play a part in it. The recent oil rig explosion, loss of 11 lives and resulting oil leak has really disappointed me on so many levels. Now the containment unit that was supposed to help, doesn't work because, well, it was kind of a dumb idea to begin with. Each new idea seems worse than the first and does anyone find it funny that if the TOP HAT doesn't work they're going with the HOT TAP? Anyway, it seems the concern is not with stopping the leak altogether but saving the oil and that bothers me. Would it be horrible to shut down the flow altogether? They are drilling a relief well anyway, so it doesn't seem necessary to keep this one going. How is it that the country that put a man on the moon can't seem to fix an oil leak? Then once it does get fixed, there's the clean up. Guess what? All that oil doesn't go away, in fact, there's still oil on the beaches in Alaska from the Exxon Valdez spill. That was 20 years ago and not nearly as bad as this spill.
The oil is being spewed into our ocean at a stunning 200,000 gallons a day. Sounds like a lot of money and oil that is being lost. The sad thing is, most of that oil isn't even used by our country. People believe that more offshore drilling will get us away from foreign oil. Um, nope. You see, as long as politicians get their pockets fattened by "big oil" we're not getting away from foreign oil. Most of our oil goes to other countries, so putting a rig off the coasts of Florida, California or my homestate of North Carolina is not going to do much. I was against this idea before the rig explosion. Too risky for those who work them, they are out in the middle of the ocean after all, and too risky for our environment. We need to work toward sustainable, alternative energy. I know it can't happen overnight, there needs to be a transistion. Wind energy, water energy and solar energy have come a long way and we need to invest in these options more.
You know, the funny thing is that some politicians thought the wind farm they're planning on building off the coast of Massachusettes would interfere with the environment and the fishing industry among other things. Well, I don't forsee hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil spilling into the ocean or an interruption of the fishing industry if a wind turbine breaks down, the way the explosion of an oil rig did. I have the sneaking suspicion, however, that had this been the approval of an oil rig, those same politicians probably wouldn't have argued.
Another benefit to the wind farm is that won't require people to be working them daily and risk the possiblity of being hurt and out in the middle of the ocean. A man who has had a wind farm on his land for 10 years has never seen a bird killed by a turbine or thought that the sound that came from them was loud and distracting. Obviously, wind can't power our cars but many other options are out there from electricity to hydro-electric power. We, the people, just have to be willing to take the risk and ask for these options to be more readily available. The more we do to show those in power that this is what we want, they will listen. And those that are seeking to make money, will find a way to do so from alternative energy. It's about our planet and our home, the only one we have.