The oil well spewing crude into the Gulf of Mexico has done more than fuel my temper regarding the arrogance of ultra-rich oil companies like Exxon and BP. It’s also sort of creeped me out.
This is due, in large part, to all of the science fiction I’ve been reading recently — specifically a collection of short stories by prolific sci-fi authour Philip K. Dick.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with him, you may be surprised to learn that you have already seen a number of movies based on his work. Most famous are probably the films based on his stories “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” and “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale”, which became the films Blade Runner and Total Recall, respectively.
One theme that connects these works is their situation in not-too-distant dystopian futures just one or two slippery slope slides away from our own world.
In “Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?” (and many of his other works) Dick imagines a future where humans rely too heavily on technology, and allow robotics and automation to progress unchecked — and what does it get us? Homocidal androids.
In “The Minority Report” — with a little influence by George Orwell, I suspect — Dick imagines a world where police are allowed to advance their war on crime unchecked, and what happens? People are getting cuffed after merely thinking about committing crimes.
So what happens when we let oil companies turn up their nose at safety restrictions, polluting the world’s oceans and turning them into sludgy, lifeless wastelands?
I like to think that life-filled oceans, teeming with diverse eco-systems, are one of the major advantages we have over the fictional residents of Earth in Blade Runner or The Matrix. When we lose the oceans, then what have we got?
The most frustrating part of the spill on the Gulf Coast for me is how, with a little preparedness, it could have quickly been neutralized.
It seems oil companies with rigs off the coasts of Brazil and Norway must include emergency shut-off ‘acoustic switches’ that allow pipes to be remotely closed in case of an emergency.
American drill sites and those in the United Kingdom, which houses the headquarters of BP who hired the Gulf Coast rig, don’t require these safety measures. This ‘Deepwater Horizon’ rig apparently opted out of voluntarily installing the $500,000 safety switch.
Even though the switch wouldn’t have saved the 11 lives tragically lost in the initial explosion, I wonder, years from now, how many sea creatures and habitats could have been saved by that relatively affordable (by oil company standards) preventative measure.
To the folks responsible for the accident and the cleanup, $500,000 probably seems like quite the bargain.