Oil Spills: Let's Put Those Big Brains to Work!

If there is anything we have learned, it is that oil spills happened. The difficulty is in the unbelievable environmental damages that subsequently occur. Many Americans harbor hatred for oil rigs as well as their employees. All of us are worried about the marine life affected by these spills whether it be in Alaska, or in the Gulf of Mexico this April. Let's take some time to look behind faceless roles and blame-mongering and ask ourselves why these catastrophies are not better prevented?

Having just graduated college, I have had the privelege of being around many bright, tenacious women. One of these women just graduated with a degree in Engineering from Northeastern. She was offered a position working in the Gulf of Mexico on an oil rig and she was rightfully ecstatic about being offered a job in a time when graduates everywhere are wondering how far their degree will take them in this economy, if anywhere. Furthermore, she is taking a supervisor position in her field of study, a field that is overwhelmingly dominated by men. Go smart chicks! Great pay, incredible company benefits, being able to work in the field that captivated her interest years ago? She would be crazy not to take the job.

The point I am trying to make is that the people on these oil rigs are no dummies. They go through months of training (the recent graduate I spoke of is attending training seminars until January 2011). These employees are not trying to damage the environment. So it is a shame that they become targets of ridicule when mistakes happen. Oil rigs are dangerous, thus is their nature. After all, eleven of these employees died during the April Gulf of Mexico spill.

America does not have the clout to stop oil digging in the ocean. The demands and pressure are too high from a global economic standpoint that the U.S. could not leave the race if we tried. Furthermore, the education and technology of the current oil rigs run from American soil are by far superior to the competition. Plainly speaking, we have tried to make them as safe as possible.

Instead of the disastrous media coverage of this oil spill, what we should be focusing on is learning the prevantative measures taken to limit the damage when these problems do occur. From what it seems, the cleanup is not particularly successful. But as a global example we cannot have the mantra, "Dig first, think later." As citizens of the earth we need to have complex and fast-acting cleanup and contamination minimizing procedures.

The general consensus has been that the damage caused from the Gulf spill is not known. Surely independent experiments prior to a real life spill could give scientists a better concept of how this amount of oil would affect the marine life. Or at least the dispersal of the oil. But to tell concerned people around the world that concrete data is not known? Well then maybe there should not be digging in the first place. We cannot, absolutely cannot start drilling holes into the ocean before we understand the scope of a possibility that appears more and more likely with each spill. Oil rigs have a fleet of talented engineers and scientists at their disposal, perhaps there should be a citation dictating that a certain amount of employees should be trained exclusively in prevantative and spill research. These spills are happening far too often for us to keep saying, "Oops."  We need to put these good brains to use.