Energy and Environment

I have been meeting a lot of new people lately, mainly because I am searching for a new room-mate. And obviously the conversation comes to our area of research. Somehow every time I mention oil, the reaction is more of a shock or something similar. I can't name that expression.

Usually people ask me, isn't oil prospecting old fashioned? Or you work for alternate energy or just the oil prospecting? Somehow the idea of someone working for oil industry is monstrous for them. It always comes to, 'Oh so you will earn big money.' And somehow its not meant as a compliment. You know for them, I am part of the industry who doesn't care about the environment and obviously the root cause of recent wars and problems in the world is oil industry. And then comes the conclusion, at times more explicitly than others, oil is evil. I have been taking this beating for a while now and never respond to those nice people to check their beliefs before they start preaching them.

What do you think will happen to world if the oil industry stop working right now? I don't think either of those so-called environment-friendly people would want that. And talking about the alternative energy, don't these so called environment friendly people have problems with them too. Here is a list of alternative energies, they so fondly talk about:

1. Nuclear Power Plants: One of the most efficient way to produce energy but you know the risks and impacts. Honestly, I would go for oil instead of nuclear anyday.

2. Hydro-electric power plants: Remember Narmada Bachchao Andolan? Medha Patkar? Building dams would mean land usage and that would mean displacing people from those areas, in case you live in highly populated country like India. Yes, I agree, its bad if you consider the locals and the lives of people getting displaced. And since I never believed in sacrifices so I wouldn't say that they should be sacrificed for the benefits of others. I am just listing the problems faced by each "alternative resources".

3. Wind mills: Pretty clean way to produce energy. Problems locals have with wind-mills? To start with, you can't just place windmills anywhere and expect it to work. You need to have certain amount of wind energy in that place in order for it to work. Now the problems with wind-mills that they can be a bit noisy and hence people don't like them around their place. So the "Wind-farms" has to be setup at places with less population density, usually in rural areas. Though I don't see many places in India to be like that.

Anyways, second problem that environmentalist has with wind mills is that birds are sucked in and killed by these wind mills. Yep you got it right. Birds. Killed by wind-mills. Problem. Protests. Honestly, I can't make myself sympathize with the birds here. Though I can understand if the farmers have problems if the population of predatory birds like owls etc is decreasing as it will have an impact on rodent population and hence a headache for them. In any case, if you compare the figures of birds killed by wind-mills per year with the ones that fly/strike into a window and die (yes they do that), its pretty low.

(Image from : Sibley Guides.com)
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The last problem that people have with windmills is that they ruin the landscape. There has been talk of putting windmills towards the shore of west coast of US. The shore lines, as you know, has very good wind energy that can be utilized but that will ruin the landscape.

4. Solar Energy: Not as good a resource as it varies drastically from year to year, season to season and day to day as well as region to region. But again the problems are similar as wind-mills, landscape, land-usage and to some extent if birds get near those mirrors, they will be roasted alive.

So basically if you consider the environmentalists and their demands, don't you think we should go back to live in caves and not impact the environment at all? Even fire poses a hazard to environment, so lets go back to times before man discovered the fire. We will save the Earth.

Don't take me wrong. I am not against all the environmental issues. It hurts me pretty bad whenever I think about the way they torch the natural gas in Africa and other places just because they don't have any means to store and transport it. Its such a big waste, not to mention a source of green-house gases. I don't like what oil-spills do to the environment either. I don't like the way US consumes 25% of petroleum production of the world when it has only 2% of world's population. These issues should be considered and worked on. Not the landscapes and bird population.

Anyway, coming back to oil industry being evil. May be before we finish the oil we will have a combination alternative resources to take its place but right now we can't afford to do that. It forms our major energy resource at the moment. And our work in oil industry, besides making profit and earning money, is to find and extract oil from Earth so that you have electricity in your homes. So that your food and other products reach you from the rural parts of the country. So that the industries have energy and they can produce your computers, your clothes..practically everything and then transport them to you. Can you imagine what will happen if oil industry stops right now? Do you really think the environment issues associated with oil industry are as big?

Oh yes, I forgot the war-aspect of oil. Do you think there were no wars in the world before oil was discovered? Or do you think there won't be disagreements in the world if we go for these alternative resources? Resource like water, nuclear can be very controversial. Remember Kaveri water dispute? Or recent Iran Nuclear development problems?

I don't think damning the oil industry is the solution here.

Also read Doom's Day.

P.S.: I know its a very haphazard post. There is no flow and may be I could have made it shorter but I didn't have enough time to do so. I guess you get the basic idea and my indignation here..