Wind Power and Oil Rigs

It seems that there is always contradictory news to report.  I smiled as I read the headline this morning that the country’s first offshore wind farm had been approved.  This is a good step forward in creating more renewable energy for our country, which Presbyterian policies, such as 2008’s The Power to Change, have long advocated for.

However, my happiness with this long-debated wind farm finally coming to fruition was eclipsed by the other major environmental news this week: the oil spill that is continuing in the Gulf of Mexico.  Last week B.P.’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig sank after an explosion, which left eleven people missing, who are now presumed dead.  Oil continues to leak from a well that is more than 5,000 feet below the water's surface, and yesterday the Times-Picayune reported that the well is spewing five times more oil than first expected.  As of yesterday, 1.5 million gallons of oil had spilled into the Gulf of Mexico.  The oil is expected to reach the coast of Louisiana tomorrow, which will have devastating effects on the local environment, its people, and its economy. 

While we celebrate the planned off shore wind farm, and hold the families of missing oil rig workers and people of coastal communities on the Gulf of Mexico in our prayers, let us also advocate for meaningful climate change legislation.  Legislation that will give us more energy projects to praise and less disasters to respond to.  Email your Senators to ask them to support climate change legislation that will bring climate justice.  And let us look for ways to be less oil-dependent in our own lives.