[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="450" caption="President Barack Obama Meets With BP Officials, On the Left is Tony Hayward, Photo Credit: White House"][/caption]
"The oil spill is not the last crisis America will face. This nation has known hard times before and we will surely know them again. What sees us through -– what has always seen us through –- is our strength, our resilience, and our unyielding faith that something better awaits us if we summon the courage to reach for it." This is a quote from President Barack Obama. That quote was taken from his Oval Office address.
What he says is quite true. The way we will get through this crisis is to just bear it through and not give up. We have to work together to get this handled.
Today, President Barack Obama is talking to the BP chairman, Tony Hayward. He will be demanding that that he set aside whatever resources are required to compensate the workers and business owners who have been harmed due to his company's recklessness. This fund will not be controlled by BP. In order to ensure that all legitimate claims are paid out in a fair and timely manner, the account will be administered by an independent third party. This will make it harder for BP to do anything funny.
Barack Obama goes on to say that he must make a commitment to the Gulf Coast that goes beyond just responding to the crisis of the moment.
"I make that commitment tonight. Earlier, I asked Ray Mabus, the Secretary of the Navy, who is also a former governor of Mississippi and a son of the Gulf Coast, to develop a long-term Gulf Coast Restoration Plan as soon as possible. The plan will be designed by states, local communities, tribes, fishermen, businesses, conservationists and other Gulf residents. And BP will pay for the impact this spill has had on the region. "
The White House Press Secretary, Robert Gibbs took questions from the American people about the BP oil spill. One of the questions was about whether Barack Obama would be using this to try to end our dependence on foreign oil.
To this, Robert Gibbs replied that he did indeed think that Obama would try to do something about our dependence on foreign oil and that he would try to advance clean and renewable energy.
This is at least one good thing that may come out of this oil spill. I sincerely hope that after this, the American people have learned their lesson. We cannot continue to depend on oil for our energy. There are other ways to get energy. Take Tesla Motors for example. It's a company dedicated to making electric cars. They have even partnered with Toyota to help their cars become less expensive so more people can afford them.
These electric cars are beautiful and elegant. They have power and speed under their hoods. However, they run on clean electricity. That is what sets them apart. When you think of an electric car, you may think of a slow, ugly little thing that can maybe drive for ten minutes.
That is wrong. Tesla cars are beautifully designed, they have a top speed of 125 mph (electronically limited) and they have a range of 245 miles per charge. 245 miles is a lot more than the normal person drives per day, so that's plenty. And, 0-60 mph in 3.9 seconds!
See what you can do with renewable energy?
The only problem is that it needs to get more widely accepted in the United States. That is what many people are hoping is going to happen when this oil spill crisis is over and cleaned up.
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Renewable Energy
الأربعاء، 16 يونيو 2010
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Mr Gibbs's response to the question about renewable energy might lead one to think he is an investor in either Tesla or Toyota.
ردحذفSomeone should really inform him that, if charged here in the US, there is only a 10.5% chance those Tesla Motors vehicles are running on electricity generated from renewable sources. There's an almost 70% chance they're running on coal or natural gas.
(The latter, btw, was what caused the Deepwater Horizon to explode in the first place.)
The promise of electric vehicles is a nice-sounding piece of rhetoric, though. Clearly, it helped him dodge the question in the mind of the reporter who wrote this piece. But it won't do a damn thing until we get serious about changing our energy policy.
A good first step would be for President Obama to ensure that Mr Hayward never "gets his life back." As the executive ultimately responsible for BP's wanton culture of negilgence, he should be made an extreme example of.
Still, it is up to the American poeple to truly affect change. Yes, we need to demand TRULY clean energy. But we also need to demand that our representatives in government create real regulation and oversight in the energy industry, root out corruption, and hold industry's feet to the fire while there's still time to prevent catastrophe, rather than when it's time to create a fund to mitigate it.