Dr. Riki Ott, a marine toxicologist, just happened to be living in Cordova, Alaska at the time of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989. What are the chances of that? Rather inopportune for Exxon and now for BP.

She spoke this morning about the long term effects on the people who cleaned up the Exxon Valdez spill and is warning that the same process is unfolding in Louisiana. Have we learned nothing from past oil spills? It would seem that our governments and oil companies haven’t.

Dr. Riki Ott’s interview is in Hour One. It’s just under 28 minutes long and worth every minute.

She’s also written a couple of books on the Exxon Valdez oil spill: Sound Truth and Corporate Myths – The legacy of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill and Not One Drop – Betrayal and Courage in the Wake of the Exxon Valdez oil Spill.

Screen capture from 31 year old video from the Gulf of Mexico. Yes, it's happened before.

Watching this video was shocking. I know it shouldn’t have been, but it was. The parallels between the Ixtoc oil spill in the Gulf over 30 years ago are eerily similar to the spill now.

Ultimately, the solution to the previous blowout was relief wells. I’m guessing back then they actually thought what they were doing might work. I suspect now they know that what they’re doing won’t work except, hopefully, for the relief wells.

That being said, with this kind of experience and BP having had to have known about this previous blowout, why didn’t they focus more energy on preventing the oil from coming ashore?

I’m not sure how much more ridiculous this situation could get, but I’m sure we’re all prepared.

The real question is, if the government and oil companies already had this experience 30 years ago, why weren’t they better prepared for it now?

The only real answer is: money talks.

For over a month now, conservative estimates are that a minimum of 5,000 barrels a day of oil are gushing into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico just off the coast of Louisiana. Recent revised estimates are now pushing that number to 12- to 19,000 barrels a day. Some estimates are as high as 70,000 barrels per day.

Either way, we’re seeing what may be one of the worst known marine disasters in history rolling out in the bountiful waters of the U.S. coast.

The U.S. government also shares a great deal of the blame for the situation and the inaction in cleaning it up and mitigating the damage. Obama is also being heavily criticized now for the government’s inaction, and rightly so.

Offshore drilling regulations

Once the immediate problem of the gushing oil is solved, there are a few major issues to be resolved. The lawsuits will go on for years, and BP is going to be in serious trouble.

Perhaps we will see sensible offshore drilling regulations in the U.S. and even more importantly, regulatory enforcement. If ever we’ve had a graphic illustration of the dangers of cozying up to the companies you’re regulating this would certainly make the case.

At the risk of opening up the discussion to a wider issue, I’m not in favour of government being cheerleaders for business. Government should be operating as a referee between citizens and business. Government should set a level playing field and enforce it to the benefit of all. It’s not good to tilt the playing field in favour of either group.

I also believe in a free flow of information, something that government and business are usually loathe to accommodate. I am not a fan of secrecy. Evil and stupidity tend to thrive behind veils of secrecy.

The cleanup

View of the top of the BP oil well blowout preventer in the Gulf of Mexico

Perhaps the most shocking thing about this whole Gulf disaster is the slow pace of protection and cleanup. From what I’ve gathered, the government seems to be bowing to BP to control the cleanup and protect sensitive environmental areas.

Had more protective measure been taken concurrent to BP’s attempt to stop the oil gushing into the Gulf, we might not be seeing the environmental damage on the Louisiana coast we’re seeing now. The fishing industry in the Gulf could potentially be threatened for generations.

This is another area where the Obama administration has been tremendously weak. The appearance is that the talk is tough, but there is no action to back it up. The administration claims it has its foot on BP’s neck, but the reality is that the public is going to have its foot on Obama’s neck if he doesn’t do something about this slowly expanding disaster.

BP keeping secrets

For obvious reasons BP has been trying to limit access to the beaches and affected waters. It doesn’t want the public to know the scale of the disaster. It doesn’t want the public to know how dangerous dispersants like Corexit actually are.

I believe the dispersants are actually formulated to keep the oil below the surface where the true extent and danger of the cloud of oil will remain secret. One has to wonder whether BP and the U.S. government have brought in oceanographers, water experts and other scientists to determine the true scale of the problem hidden below the surface of the Gulf waters.

With the top-kill attempts, BP is pumping drilling mud into the failed blowout preventer. They haven’t released how many barrels per hour they’re pumping into it, but if they were to be able entirely replace the flow of oil and gas from the well with mud, we would know exactly how many barrels per day were coming out of that well.

I am positive BP knows this number, but there’s no way in hell they’ll release it. Drilling mud isn’t cheap, and I am sure they meter it when they pump it. They know

The scary part is that they’re probably pumping as much mud into the well as they can but they’re still not completely displacing the flow of oil and gas. This means that however many thousand barrels per hour BP is pumping in are only part of what is escaping from the blowout preventer.

Public relations? What’s PR?

Information about this man-made disaster will eventually flow. I’m sure BP has consulted Oliver North on how to handle the back office though. Once that information is public, I think there will be even more outrage than there is now.

I think this is the key reason BP is so secretive. If the public knew the real extent of the problem, BP executives would be in serious danger.

On the other hand, BP seems not to have learned that in modern PR putting all your cards on the table as soon as possible is inevitably the best strategy. From a legal perspective, at least in the U.S., the crime never seems to be punished as severely as lying about it.

I am sure BP executives probably have their private jets on idle for when the arrest warrants and extradition orders are issued. I’m guessing they won’t be fleeing to any Caribbean countries though.

Once the flow of oil stops from this out of control well, the lawsuits are going to be out of control too. I think we’ll see BP executives arrested once the truth starts to come out. It may be only for their own protection.

The future of energy & government

I hope that efforts to stop the flow are successful soon. It sounds like relief wells could be months away, if they’re even successful.

To me, this whole issue illustrates the importance of moving away from petroleum as a primary source of energy in our society. As oil companies are forced into deeper and more dangerous waters and we recover oil from dirtier sources such as oilsands, one has to wonder why we’re not pouring more resources into alternative energy and distributed power generation.

We have the technology now and the means to put solar and wind power on homes and to create wind farms. This can happen far quicker than wide distribution of fuel cells or the creation of nuclear power plants. Perhaps if we subsidized the production and installation of wind and solar instead of oil and gas, we’d reduce our need for fossil fuels more quickly.

Mass production of electric cars really isn’t that far away either. The reality is that in colder climates, I suspect we’ll still be relying on fossil fuels to a greater degree, especially in a vast country like Canada.

There seems to be little political will to move more quickly on alternative energy, not unlike the lack of political will to deal with climate change.

Regulation and enforcement obviously need to be strengthened and the cozy culture of government and business needs to end. I’m not confident this is going to change soon though. Our politicians are too reliant on the perks, benefits, political contributions, bribes and post-politics jobs that flow from the businesses they loosely regulate.

Citizens are angry and need to let politicians know just how angry they are. If ever our planet has needed grass roots action, it’s now. The corruption in political circles across the planet these days absolutely sickens me and it seems to get worse by the day. Politicians had better understand that they govern with the consent of the citizens they represent. Around the world I think we’re going to see that consent increasingly withdrawn.

I don’t think we’ve ever seen a country hit so hard by an earthquake and Haiti is hardly a country equipped to deal with a crisis of this magnitude.

What really surprised me is how so many of the buildings in Haiti crumbled under the magnitude 7 earthquake. I suppose, considering it’s such a poor country, we shouldn’t have expected the buildings there to be up to modern earthquake standards.

With the level of destruction and complete chaos still reigning in Haiti, it may be too early to talk about reconstruction, but it will have to happen at some point. I was watching a news story about the earthquake in Haiti when I saw a scene from the docks of Port Au Prince. Shipping containers were strewn about the dock and had fallen into the bay.

It occurred to me then that when Haiti finally does get around to rebuilding its battered buildings, it should consider a relatively new form of construction that might be quite appropriate for this hurricane and earthquake prone region.

Using shipping containers as homes and apartments in Haiti may be a quick and easy way to create large amounts of secure and safe housing for the citizens of Haiti. Shipping containers have the advantage of being cheap, strong and are able to be built with in a modular fashion. It’s been done in other areas, unplanned, but it could be planned here.

Once a secure foundation is built, these containers can be welded together and stacked up to seven levels high, effectively creating a strong, cohesive structure.

Haiti has many problems with its infrastructure and these containers could be used as a template for construction in other areas around the world. Systems could easily be implemented on a cargo container apartment building to provide the occupants water, energy and safe waste disposal. Best of all is that their new home would withstand hurricanes and earthquakes.

On the building’s roof it would be easy to set up a series of solar panels and small wind generators to provide residents with electricity and the entire roof could be used to catch rainwater for residents’ use. Combine that with a storage and filtration system and residents have a way to secure some of their water needs. A greywater recycling system could also divert water to gardens for residents to be able to grow some of their own food.

Instead of regular flush toilets, it would make more sense to install composting or incinerating toilets to preserve water. It would also lighten the load on Haiti’s overtaxed and destroyed infrastructure.

A layer of spray foam insulation for each container unit would help to reduce or eliminate the need for air conditioning, freeing up electricity for other uses.

I’ve talked before about going off-grid in the city, and while that may not be entirely possible, an increased level of independence would be beneficial for residents of such a building.

Ideally these containers would be converted in another location, shipped to Haiti and assembled there. The world has thousands of unused shipping containers and I believe it would be an ideal way to give Haitians a secure form of housing that could help them recover from this disaster.

When I look at my utility bills it’s a little frustrating. I actually get charged for water drainage based on the number of square feet of my lot? Really? Epcor manages the groundwater too?

And gas. The fixed charges ever y month are ridiculous! In B.C., my gas bill wasn’t a whole lot more than that.

How would you go off-grid in the city?

There are several systems you’d need to replace, and it might not be easy. Possible? I think so, but you’d have to plan it. And when I refer to going off-grid, I’m mainly referring to major utilities such as electricity, gas, water and sewer. Phone and Internet are other possibilities.

Wouldn’t it be nice to be disconnected? I would love it.

Water

I have looked into water collection and filtration systems, and this one could be a challenge. I haven’t yet calculated if there’s enough precipitation in Edmonton to be able to pull this off, but I think it’s possible.

You need to have a roofing material that doesn’t leach chemicals into your rainwater. You’d need to collect all the runoff from your roof in underground tanks, and from there filter the water and direct it into your house. It would be key to reduce your water use, which could be done with composting toilets, low flow faucets and showerheads, efficient dishwashers and clothes washers.

Sewer

This one’s not as hard as you might think. Your sewer stream pretty much splits into two parts: black water and grey water. Black water comes from your toilet and grey water is from your sinks, tubs and washers.

The black water is easily dealt with in a composting toilet. They’re not expensive and are environmentally friendly. They turn human waste into compost. Do you want to put it on your garden? Well, that’s up to you, but you could put it in your yard in good conscience.

Grey water is a little tougher to deal with, mostly because city government would probably stand in the way. You simply need to gather your grey water, send it to a holding tank, end disperse it underground. You can use it to water plants, etc.

I’m not fully familiar with all aspects of a grey water system, but I know that houses in the country use the same principle, except they discharge grey and black water. The beneficial aspects of a grey water system are that they aren’t dumped into a river but replenish ground water, make it so you’re not using treated municipal water on your yard (which seems like a waste) and it disconnects you from the municipal services.

By using a composting toilet you reduce the amount of water you use.

Gas

If you use gas for heating, this one wouldn’t be that hard to get rid of. One of the primary considerations is to reduce your heating load and switch your clothes drying to solar and electricity. I would also switch to geothermal heating and make sure your hot water is heated with electricity and solar.

My goal is to eliminate my gas connection. Bye bye furnace. Bye bye gas hot water tank. The furnace would be replaced by geothermal and the hot water tank is electric and is supplemented by solar hot water.

Reducing your heating load

By reducing your heating load, which just means insulating and reducing heat loss, you make it easier to provide the power to run your other systems.

The steps may be simple or they might be more complex and costly, depending on your home. The previous owner here was smart and put on two inches of extra insulation on our house and installed triple glazed windows. That’s a good start!

You can make sure your doors are insulated, seal up all the cracks where heat might escape, insulate crawlspaces and especially your attic.

Insulating really well is common sense whether you’re on grid or off. It reduces the amount of fuel you need to heat and reduces the electricity you need to keep cool in the summer if you use air conditioning. If your house were to be designed properly, you wouldn’t need cooling in the summer either.

Electricity

This is the tough one. Electricity is going to power your geothermal heating, hot water, clothes drying, lights and all your electrical devices. The trick is, how do you generate enough electricity to be able to power all those things?

First, you need to make sure you’re using as little electricity as possible. Simple things like compact fluorescent bulbs help, but LEDs will be better. Take advantage of nice days to dry your clothes outside (what a novel concept). Do you really need air conditioning (if you super insulate, you may not)? I lived for years without air conditioning. Big deal.

The key is to generate enough electricity to power your geothermal system which can function like a heater and refrigerator all in one. You reverse it in the summer and it cools your house. Nice.

Generating electricity

It’s a nice thought to have electricity as the one form of power for your house, but how do you generate enough? And how do you get the city to go for it?

Solar is one obvious answer, but there are several parts to it. Solar panels can generate electricity and solar hot water panels can preheat your hot water, reducing the need to heat it with electricity. To further complicate things, your geothermal can also heat your hot water. So, solar hot water would reduce the load on your geothermal system as well.

If you think you won’t like the look of solar panels on your house, stop reading. Your roof will have solar panels and solar hot water panels.

Electrical wind generators

Another way to generate electricity is to have a wind generator. I’ve seen two that intrigue me. One is on a vertical axis and takes up very little space. Another resembles a whiffle ball and spins on a horizontal axis. I could have one on my house and one on my garage. It would be key to make sure that they do not have guy wires and are more than adequately secured.

I don’t worry about the killing birds argument. First, it’s a rarity. Second, if the wind generator doesn’t get them, global warming may eliminate their species. I think one of the Prime Directives from Star Trek probably addresses that well.

The major problem really would be your neighbours and the city. NIMBYs and numbskulls? Your neighbours would complain they’re noisy (they’re not) and the city would probably complain just because it’s different. Sorry, I don’t care about your codes. If you’ve watched Mike Holmes, you’ll understand that minimum code requirements barely qualify as toilet paper.

Edmonton is a very windy city, I find, and I’m sure there would be plenty of windpower to make this viable.

Is it enough electricity?

Important question. How much is enough? Will your solar panels and wind generators be enough? Perhaps. You also need to have adequate storage for those times when the sun isn’t out and the wind’s not blowing.

You’d need to do some serious planning to ensure you have enough electricity for all your needs. Electric stoves, dryers and hot water heaters are major power hogs, so you need to make sure you provide more than you think you’ll need.

Other electricity generation methods

We’re a little ways off yet, but a home power cell could be another option. From the reading I’ve done, it seems like a stationary power cell might be more feasible than one for your vehicle. Along with electricity they can also generate heat. This would be a nice addition to the other systems.

Cost?

I never said my dream was cheap. I haven’t calculated a cost yet, mainly because I would have to know what my requirements are, but I can see it approaching $100,000 or more, quite easily.

Solar panels, while becoming cheaper, still are quite expensive. Geothermal for my house would be in the $40,000 range. Solar hot water is surprisingly inexpensive. I have to put on a new roof anyway, so that’s going to have to be spent anyway. $20,000? Wind generators? $10-15,000? Battery backup? I have no idea. Solar panels? Again, no idea yet. Toilets, maybe $2,500. Grey water system? $5,000?

Seems like a lot of money to spend just to disconnect from those power bills. Does it make sense from a practical perspective? Well, that depends on how you look at it.

Peak oil?

The idea that we’ve reached the mid-point of world oil production and that it will decline from here is a reality. We don’t know when that mid-point is, but it will happen. The idea really came to the fore when US oil production peaked in 1970, as predicted by an American petroleum expert. He predicted it in the 50s.

Alberta’s conventional oil production is also in decline. You think through the boom it’s increased? Sorry, it’s declined every year since about 1998 (earliest year for which I’d seen the figures).

Wonder why I don’t want gas as my heat source? Well, Canada is running out and usage is increasing, especially by the oil sands.

You can argue it, but it’s a simple matter of fact: energy costs will increase in the future. If peak oil becomes a reality, or more accurately, if the general population realizes it is, then watch out. This is when alternative energy will be alternative no more.

Global warming

As much as I want to save the planet, I realize there’s only so much I can do as an individual. You’ve seen my ideas. This is what I want to do.

Human beings collectively don’t seem to be too bright. We only seem to take action when forced. We tend to be more reactive than proactive. Sure, there are exceptions. Don’t take it personally. I’m not necessarily talking about you, but we’re all guilty of complacency at one point or other.

If the economics work, then people will change, but not before. Why can’t we do the right thing because it’s just the right thing? Who knows, but I’m trying to make choices that are the right thing.

Governments

What I’m proposing is a little radical. Expect entrenched interests like electrical, water, sewer and gas utilities to fight this idea. They’ve got the money to do it, but whose interests are they fighting for? Certainly not yours.

Governments, unwise ones at least, will generally fight this as well. It’s too different. It’s too forward thinking. It upsets their apple cart.

Think of the benefits this could bring. Tax credits that promote these types of options could be something that helps turn the economy around. It’ll benefit oil and gas companies too.

If, within a year, Canadians cut the amount of oil, gas and electricity they use in their homes and cars in half, wouldn’t that be beneficial? Those utilities could then sell that oil and gas to higher bidders in the US; same with the electricity. We’d probably meet our original Kyoto obligations (perish the thought).

Manufacturers of solar panels, wind generators, geothermal supplies, home building supplies (windows, doors, insulation), would all be busier than ever. And what about the people required to install these things? They couldn’t keep up.

You think that wouldn’t turn around the economy?

How about incentives to trade in your gas guzzler on a much more fuel efficient vehicle? If Detroit or Windsor produced some of those, even better.

The banks

Our federal government could even come up with a program that required banks to lend to homeowners based on a formula. I don’t know if it would work, but here it goes.

Your home could be assessed to determine the best ways of cutting your energy use. The final cost could be added to your mortgage at a preferential interest rate and the bank could offset that amount with any government incentives. Ideally, the savings you see today (based on current and projected energy costs over the amortization period of the loan) and in the future would offset the additional mortgage payment you would make.

So, for the home owner, ideally it would be revenue neutral. As energy costs increase, homeowners would see savings. It would increase the value of their home. It would stimulate the economy. It would lower our greenhouse gas emissions. Canadians would be more independent and less reliant on giant utilities (okay, so it’s not as good for them).

The details

Of course I haven’t given all the details. They can be worked out. I think the concepts are important. We can move toward these options on our own, proactively, or we can do it reactively. It makes much more sense to take control, do it now and be prepared.

The question I have for every Canadian politician is: do you have the guts to make these kinds of decisions that are in the best interest of Canadians?

Will it happen?

So, will I ever go off-grid? I’d like to. Frankly, I just don’t have the money to do it. If I did, I would. I would be a pioneer. If you’re out in the country, it’s far easier.

Let’s hope business is even better for me in the future and I’ll be able to do it.

This is hardly a complete treatment of the subject. There’s so much more that could be said, and I’d like to go into more detail in the future. Feel free to share your ideas and comments here.