I just got assigned a project about off-shore drilling due in a week. I know very little on this subject and was wondering if anyone could give me any insight as to why off-shore drilling is bad.
you really ought to look at it from the perspective of near shore versus deep water drilling. I was reading at article last night that indicated that the current spill is so much worse to due to the depth which make repairs much more difficult than a near shore rig.
One reason it is bad is because it perpetuates our dependency on oil. The amount of oil we get from our own sources is not much compared to the amount of oil we consume. So if we're going to consume so much more than we can "produce", we might as well get it from the Middle East while weening ourselves off of it. In the end, we need to drastically cut down on our consumption of oil. Between all the vehicles and plastic in this country, we're like fiends for this sh!t.
It seems more like a necessity then being bad. It certainly would be easier if the rigs where in shallower water or better yet on land. There are risks as we're seeing now, but our world as we know it can't exist without oil, and very very few of us are willing to give up products either made with or that consume it, I know I personally prefer driving over walking any day.
We wouldn't be in the Middle East fighting a war right now if we weren't dependant on their oil. For the US to depend on foreign oil is very short sighted and a direct risk to our own national security. We could produce all of the oil we need domestically; it's just that we choose not to because nobody wants it in their own backyard. So young men will continue to fight and die instead.
Well if its not coming from our backyards, it has to come from the Middle East because like everything else - we consume more than we produce. Off-shore drilling is like putting a band-aid on a broken leg when it comes to our oil consumption.
