How far is far enough? How deep is deep enough? How much risk is enough?



An article in Monday’s NY Times reveals that the Deepwater Horizon well is a piker as far as deep water drilling goes. Perdido, a $3 billion rig 200 miles from shore can pump oil from dozens of wells while drilling new ones at the same time. Sounds rather octopus like. What was I reading on multitasking lately? Oh yeah, that most of us function more poorly when multitasking. Does that extend to oil rigs?


BoH

Perdido - means “lost” in Spanish and shares the same word root as perdition- meaning “loss of the soul; damnation.”  According to the Time story. Perdido is 20 hours by supply boat from shore: “far enough out that a major fire could burn out of control before assistance arrived. Hurricanes regularly batter the region with giant waves and winds exceeding 100 miles an hour“.  Underwater currents and mudslides can destroy the equipment and the pipelines that bring oil and gas back to shore. The water temperature is barely above freezing, cold enough to “harden natural gas into crystal like structures called hydrates that can clog pipelines and other equipment. And because the wells are deeper than human divers can go, oil companies must rely on remote-controlled submarines to maintain their equipment or perform repairs”. Sounds like hell to me.

Perdido’s deepest well lies under 9,600 feet of water- nearly twice as deep as Deepwater Horizon. And ships that can drill as deep as 12,000 feet underwater have recently been launched by Transoceanic- some of the folks that brought you the Great Gulf Spew.

To me, this screams the question: How much is enough? How deep is deep enough? How far out to sea far enough? When do we draw a line, and say “no further"? 

Dana Meadows, author of Limits to Growth and a mentor to many on taking a systems approach to the world we live in, remarked to me the last time we met shortly before her death; ”The planet is not unlimited. Nature is not unlimited. We must pick the limits we are willing to live within, or nature will pick them for us.”

So I ask: what limits are we willing to live within to avoid the next oil spew, coal mine fire or collapse, species extinction or pesticide poisoning?  How can I reduce the demand for farther, deeper, riskier oil wells?  Where can I recycle, conserve, reduce, avoid, reuse? How can I vote with my dollars for living systems?  Our website is full of tips on how to live lighter on the planet.

I’m told that angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.  How can we fly toward ever greener living? Or do we wait until Perdido drills into the depths of hell?