It is distressing to read that oil companies are prospecting for oil off the Scottish coast, despite the ‘Deepwater Horizon’ disaster in the Gulf of Mexico earlier this year. This was not just an environmental disaster, eleven people died because BP was determined to carry out deep water drilling in their search for oil.
It is widely known throughout the industry that deep water drilling is extremely dangerous but oil companies are being encouraged to continue their explorations via tax beaks from government.
But if oil is found, how can we burn it without causing more climate warming? The answer is, of course, that we can’t. A further temperature rise of 2C will spell disaster for many low-lying areas of the world, including parts of our own country. The concepts of Peak Oil are hard to accept. We will never run out of oil! But we have run out of cheap oil and if we continue to use oil at the same rate as we are doing now, oil prices will rise, the cost of everything will rise and we will cause more global climate change.
Our new government should be encouraging the oil companies to forge ahead with research into renewable technologies to enable us to have a future with clean, green energy production. We have enough wind, wave and tidal power around our coasts to keep all the lights burning but we need investment into these technologies to bring them up to speed.
There are many different ways that we can generate energy from renewable resources, either individually as households or as communities working together. We must urge the government, through our MPs, to forge ahead with green technologies and to discourage oil companies from continuing their dangerous practices on our behalf.
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