Spewing Oil: On Personal Choices and New Energy Regulation
For the first time since we started the blog, I have gotten stuck in place unable to write. Like everyone, I have watched the oil spewing into the gulf with horror, frustration and a sense of the inevitability of this type of disaster when dealing with extraction and transportation of oil.
I will leave the judgments and politics to other blogs, but I agree with what Paul Anater's remarks at Kitchen and Residential Design: the oil spill is a mirror. We can all point fingers at BP and gripe about regulations or lack of enforcement, but at base level it is our collective hunger for disposable and other products that helps create this disaster. It is our car based transportation and related land use planning to helps drive demand. As Paul Anater said so eloquently:
My spending habits and my need for speed and convenience created the whole mess. Every time I buy a dollar bottle of shampoo or a $4 T-shirt I give my consent to the whole system. I vote with my money and so does everybody else. Calling for the head of Tony Hayward, BP's Chief Executive, won't stop any of this. It won't clean up the Gulf and it won't stop the world's dependence on (artificially) cheap oil. Boycotting BP won't help either. The Deepwater Horizon disaster is their fault and their problem, of that there can be no doubt. But this disaster could have happened at any offshore platform anywhere in the world.
Not all is bleak. We have the ability to make choices that can aggregate to significant change. There are signs this may be happening on a generational level. Per Richard Florida and Nate Silver, we may finally be seeing a generational shift in automobile driving habits. Locally, we Montgomery County Maryland passing a carbon and energy tax and Arlington Virginia considering adopting a long range comprehensive energy plan.
Shifting gears, we need clear direction on energy policy at a federal level as well. Local efforts to bolster energy performance by the City of Albequrque have already been challenged on the basis that federal regulations preempt the ability of states and localities to create their own regulations. Shari Shapiro reported last week that Washington State's building code is now facing a similar preemption challenge. If we are going to move past the dominance of fossil fuels, it is going to take comprehensive land use planning, appropriate energy efficiency regulation and improvements, and each of us collectively making decisions that push towards reduced energy usage in the future.
I really like what you have done with this post.
And I think there will be PLENTY for you to right about in the coming months. LEEDigation is no longer some phantom menace invented by annoying lawyers.
Thanks for the note Chris - the block was not for scrambling for topics but rather getting vapor locked on what to say about the spill. Too many things to say and not enough bite sized chunk messages to glean from it.
Getting a handle on this oil spill situation is such a mess, and the topic looms so large over so many aspects of what we regularly talk about. Energy and fossil fuels are the linchpins of so many issues: political and military entanglement in the Middle East; return on investment analysis of green buildings; extraction costs and embodied energy inherent in alternative fuel; exporting our currency overseas to unfriendly nations; global warming. It just goes on and on.
I fear that our collective short term memory disorder will just result in status quo despite this mess. It looked like $4/gal gas was starting to change things before the economy dumped, but we seem to continue to fail to get the message and adopt serious changes sooner rather than later. From my seat, those changes will comes as a when, not an if, and the only question is how painful and how much of a paradigm shift they represent.
Tim,
That was an excellent post and I think you summed up perfectly what so many of us have been struggling to find the words to say. Living in a city less than 1 mile from my office and beign forced to drive due to the complete lack of pedestrian friendly pathways is my personal experience with the problem we as society face on a much larger level.
You really hit the transportation issue on the head. Our office is right next to Metro, and I use it when I can. Unfortunately, lots of meetings, court appearances, depositions and functions are not near a metro stop. My house is inside the DC beltway, but far from a metro line. It is a little frustrating to not be able to use public transportation more as it really is easier.
Boy would my grandfather love seeing subways and trains come back, he was a railroad guy and I think about that a lot.