Take a Bath


As a young lad, I always opposed bathing; whenever I resisted, my mother would always say, “Nobody likes a stinky fellow.” I didn’t realize until now how true it is. We live and depend on oil; we need it for nearly all of our machines. Nobody cares where it comes from or how they get it, they just want it. But how far do we have to go to get it before we draw the line? The world cannot depend on oil, otherwise we will run it into the ground. We are killing the world for our own selfish needs, heedless and oblivious to what happens in the big picture. We need to find another solution other than oil. Otherwise, we will suffer the consequences, just like the entire Gulf of Mexico and Alaska when they witnessed their own oil disasters. Oil is too influential and powerful and we need to get cleaner.
The Alyeska, or the trans-Alaskan, pipeline has it’s own history of leaks and malfunctions. The Alyeska Pipeline service company gives information about the pipe’s leaks.The worst happened in 1978 when a gunman, supposedly drunk, shot a hole sending 16 thousand barrels out at Steele Creek, just east of Fairbanks. In 2001, another gunman, like the first, shot a hole releasing around six thousand barrels of oil out onto the tundra, although around four thousand were reinjected into the pipe, the surrounding tundra was severely damaged. This has not only damaged the environment, but also to the economy; 17 million dollars were needed to cover the 2001 spill alone. The pipeline has suffered numerous leaks since it’s completion in 1977 though none as bad as the two stated above. And these are but child’s play when it comes to the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill.






The Gulf of Mexico oil spill is the worst oil spill in US history. The Los Angeles Times estimates that around 200 million gallons of crude oil were dumped into the gulf, staining 68 thousand square miles of ocean, roughly the size of Oklahoma when a drilling rig exploded, rupturing an oil cap and sending 1000 to 5000 barrels of oil per day into the gulf. The worst part of it all, though, was the fact the nobody did anything; BP and the EPA were all arguing whether we should just seal it or try to contain it and continue its operation. So we sat and debated while the gulf was painted black by the most cruel artist ever, greed. The spill was so big it could be seen from space! That’s how long it took us to decide to finally seal the oil reservoir, about 87 days until it was finally capped off for good. 1074 miles of coastline were covered not to mention all the birds and fish that were killed or injured. The NOAA (National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration) was pissed. Entire ecosystems were destroyed while we bickered about nothing. The only reason this happened is because the oil companies are too fond of making easy money: they’re greedy, selfish, and utterly cruel. Oil is too powerful and we need to quit relying on it.
Oil controls us. This should not be, but is. Oil controls the world, whoever has oil is very influential. Look at OPEC, they are one the leading oil producers and they nearly own the US gas prices. Not only is oil powerful, but also extremely harmful. Look at what happens when something goes wrong. Thousands if not millions of species are affected by our mistakes. They suffer greatly and when the CEOs finally look at the report; they don’t bat an eye because then they look at their total profit and see that they are still making money. So what if a few fish die, I’m rich. Is probably what goes through their mind when do see the stats. They should think, oh crap, I’m going to get hit big time in the bank for this. And this can run through their minds if oil prices decrease and they start to fall short. This can happen if we simply decrease use of oil. It not the only source of fuel in the world, and maybe the oil companies will be a little less powerful because of it.
Clean energy is supposedly going to be the major source on the years to come, but it doesn’t look like it. The EIA states that only 9 percent of all energy used is generated by renewable resources in 2011. Oil and other non-renewable resources are still the major player and it looks that ways for a long time. But we are so confident that those resources won’t run out for generations, so this one is simply content to run the earth dry so that they can live rich for 73 years and let the next generations figure it out. We need to quit thinking this way! Greed will get us nowhere in the long run, greed is wrong, period, but it’s still there and we’ll just have to deal with it. We just need to invest more in clean, and renewable resources. Wind, water, solar power is still inefficient compared to oil and coal, but they were ineffective too when they were new. Trains blew smoke black as night back then, now there are cars that get 40 MPG. Clean energy can be the same, we just to work a little harder and get things done, like when Americans used to build railroads willy-nilly and say “yeehaw!” We can be them, just with clean power instead. Clean power is important and we need to just look at it a little more.
Oil is not the future of the world, I can see that with it’s disasters and it’s terrible allure. I believe clean energy is the future, we just to need to work harder at it and spend some more time on it. It will have it’s ups and downs, like oil; nothing is perfect. The world can power the next generation and the one after that and the one after that. That is the reason why we’re here in the first place and not on mars. Oil is too powerful but can be stopped if we quit using it, then the companies won’t have any reason to continue. When we actually start using clean energy and realize it’s better than oil; the world will be cleaner and maybe it won’t have to take a bath.