Leveraging a new infrastructure

As I write, oil is spewing into the Gulf of Mexico at the rate of 210,000 gallons a day just as it has been for weeks now. And there's still no solution in sight. Meanwhile, as should be expected, oil execs are playing the blame game; trying to pin the tail on whatever skapegoat donkey they can find (contractors, subcontractors, Halliburton...). No doubt this is costing BP some astronomic amount of money by our standards. But really, what is a few hundred million or even a couple billion when your company is knocking down an annual profit of $40 billion annually? The first oil exec that bitches about how much money this is costing them should be flown over the spill zone and dropped. Repeatedly if necessary.

This disaster, which now is likely the largest oil disaster in history, is just icing on the cake. We've known that we need to get off the oil train for a long time. And thanks to a Democratic majority and a president who is more intelligent than a 4th grader, public opinion has begun to swing that way as of late. Car companies are taking note, realizing that new innovation is likely the only way to save their financial ass. Every car company in the world is not only increasing fuel mileage in their standard production vehicles (granted, probably in light of stricter fuel efficiency regulations, but nevertheless...), but they've all started dabbling in cars that don't use oil. I've seen everything from hydrogen to natural gas to pure electric powered vehicles come across the news tickers as the possible "Next Generation" of passenger vehicles. Unfortunately, for these vehicles to become mainstream, the entire world's infrastructure must be overhauled at the same time these cars come widely available. There won't be the demand it takes to get the technology worked out and affordable without making the vehicles as easy to fuel up as they are now. Without huge financial backing, that infrastructure won't likely come at the pace needed to save our species.

So where could that financial backing come from? Hmm...what is the backbone of that infrastructure now? Oh yeah, oil. That stuff that's pouring into the Gulf right now at almost a quarter million gallons a day. And who's oil is it? The oil companies'. So by extension, it's only logical to posit that the only way we can ever hope to build (or if nothing else, remodel) the infrastructure needed to make standard the "Next Generation" of vehicles is if the oil companies use their huge wallets and immense political power to drive the transition. God knows they have the resources to do it. They just need the inspiration. If only we had something we could hold against them to leverage such a change...maybe 210,000 gallons a day worth of leverage...