We don’t have MSNBC, so I hadn’t see this clip from The Rachel Maddow Show before. If you haven’t watched it, you should. But basically, she shows, through newscast clips from 1979, that it’s all happened before. The IXTOC well blew out June 3, 1979, due to a failure in the blowout preventer. They couldn’t figure out how to stop it. They tried dispersants, a cement cone, top-kill. They finally stopped it, after nine months, with a relief well — which is what BP is looking at now.

S0 why, for goodness’ sake, has nothing changed? Why are we still drilling in the ocean, if the oil companies can’t prevent this from happening?

Easy answer. Because we can’t maintain our 20th/21st century North American lifestyles without oil.  And we can’t keep “improving” that lifestyle without more oil.

There are no easy solutions, either to stopping the leak or to changing our lifestyles.  But that doesn’t mean we should ignore the problem.

Biggest things you can do? Reduce or stop driving. Walk, bike, or use public transportation. Don’t fly. Take the train (trains use less fuel and emit less carbon). Buy local food or grow your own, so that we don’t use fuel transporting it.

You can also reduce usage of plastics and other petroleum-related products. But according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, more than two-thirds of U.S. petroleum consumption is for transportation.

This doesn’t have to happen again.

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