Who said anything about reducing consumption? Is your position really that this is the safest way we could possibly be treating oil drilling and transportation? Because I have the feeling that it's not. That maybe we could do a better job, instead of trying to figure out where we can most afford to fuck up. We're certainly not going to ELIMINATE accidents, but we could probably reduce them.
I agree 100% that we can reduce accidents but I think even more importantly we need to have a plan in place to address them after they occur.
It is seriously a 3 ring circus down here. No one is in charge, no one can make a decision, no plans in place at all to contain once the inevitable (even with increased regs, shit will happen), extremely slow response by all involved parties at just about every stage, etc.... The list goes on.
The bottom line is, we need the nasty black stuff. As a matter of fact, it is a national security concern. We can either go after as much of our own stuff as safely (within reason) or we can risk being drug into wars because we are buying it from unstable regions.
Instead of people trying to deal with the realities of the situation most are much more concerned with trying to throw jabs at the political party they don't belong to. While they throw jabs, we continue to get fucked over by all parties involved (yes, that includes the Federal government).
I'm on those boats and docks 3 times a week and the talk of a "floating blockade" is increasing daily and they have more than enough boats and people to do it. Even a short disruption of our imported oil will cause major problems that none of us need right now.
Edit: I apologize, I didn't answer your main question. Is it my position that this is the safest way to treat oil drilling, no. It is much safer to drill closer to land in shallower water but we don't like that either, or on land and now offshore. There are a lot of common sense regs that can make ultradeep drilling less prone to accidents of this nature but letting them tap the oil/gas that doesn't require ROVs to service the wellheads is still much safer even after the regs are added.
You also need one John Wayne type of guy, that has no financial interests in any company involved, at the top of the chain (like Gen. Honore in Katrina). If the .gov would have had someone like that from day 1 the reaction to the disaster would not have been/still is such a clusterfuck.
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