What to Do?

After the oil rig explosion recently, there has been a lot of talk of stopping offshore drilling. I see it on Facebook. The President has said it. I hear it around town. Several of the eleven men that died were from this area.

I suspect last month there was similar talk in West Virginia after the mine explosion.

And probably every time there is a mine collapse or similar tragedy.

I do sympathize. I have several friends here in town whose husbands work offshore. We were very fortunate they were not involved. I can't really imagine what my friends went through in hearing about the story. And the environmentalist side of me is certainly conflicted. I can't stand seeing all those animals covered in oil.

But, unlike a coin, this issue has many sides.

To stop mining or drilling would literally put thousands of men and women out of work. At a time when unemployment is already way too high. Some people in parts of this country have been without work for over a year and flooding that market with thousands more.... It just doesn't seem very responsible. If economic conditions were different, maybe.

But even then, I heard a miner's family say it is just a way of life for them. Generations follow generations into those mines. Like policemen and firefighters in New York City. It is just what some families do. They mine. I don't know if it is the same on the oil rigs, but I suspect there is some truth there as well, but maybe not quite so prevalent.

The flip side, commercial fishing is taking a beating right now because they can't harvest in oil-soaked waters. We're all going to pay more for the shrimp, oysters, crayfish, and other fish went they do start back up. Those families are hurting right now.

And from an economic standpoint, does it make sense? I've been pretty vocal that I think America needs to take care of herself. If we don't do what it takes to harvest our own natural resources, or to develop viable means to replace oil and coal, then it has to come from somewhere else. Aren't we dependent enough on foreign sources? Do we want to put ourselves in a position where $4 and $5 a gallon gasoline is the norm and we can't do anything about it because there is no bargaining chip? That doesn't seem very responsible either.

I know there are some alternatives out there, but change is slow. And I don't know enough about some of them to understand if there aren't risks associated with their production as well. How are corn and soybeans turned into fuel? Can enough electricity be generated to run all the cars this country seems to need? I don't know.

Life has risks.

So, the easy answer is just to stop. Stop everything dangerous. But the realities are not that easy. Every decision has repercussions. How do we know what the best path will be? It isn't as if you can just stop for a year and see what happens. And there are other sides to this issue that I haven't even thought of yet - on either side of the main question.

But is has always been this way. Good men died laying railroad tracks across this country decades ago. Train travel became a way of life and trains are still an important way of moving large amounts of goods from coast to coast and border to border.

Moving forward will always have the occasional setback. And the truth is, while we're hearing about two tragedies very close together, these accidents really are few and far between. Loss of life is always hard and never acceptable. But accidents happen (and please don't tell me the mining explosion wasn't an accident - I'm aware of the long list of safety violations lodged against the company). And it sometimes takes a tragedy to discover how something could be done better to prevent a future, similar, tragedy. Sometimes the baby only learns what "hot" means after they actually touch the stove.

So, back to my question. What to do? I wish I had an answer.