Hollywood Y Locker Ramblings

At the Hollywood Y, where I do my swim workout, I’m used to hearing locker conversations mostly about sports, especially basketball. Since I could really care less I usually tune out but today as I was leaving I overheard a different conversation. The topic; of course gas prices and oil. 2 guys, one I’d say about 45, the other 55. The conversation began when the older one said how he noticed traffic on the 5, especially during the day, has become lighter. They began to speculate and basically agree that less people are driving because of gas pries, which is probably a good thing. Now I agree with this especially coming from NY. My girlfriend I have been trying to take the metro when we can for doing things we may have normally done by car. (which I run on veggie oil by the way) Things like going out to dinner downtown and shooting across hollywood. But where I lost them is when they started talking about offshore drilling and the need for.

Now the opinion of the frantic may not be the same but I believe this is simply not the answer. This is desperation. We have plenty of oil in this country to keep us going. It’s called MonDak – the border of Montana and North Dakota. It holds a reserve the size of Saudi Arabia. Then there’s Alaska and a slew of other places. Why don’t we here about this;maybe some people don’t want the price of oil to drop. The main reason oil is expensive is the because of the shady practice (in my opinion) of trading on futures and yes supply is short of demand  And building an oil rig is not an inexpensive endeavor.  But I am not professing to be an analyst. I am an artist, an intuition guy. When I felt a 70 degree day in January of 2000 I didn’t just think it was just weird. Alternative energy is imperative. I believe it has the potential to be a unifying factor in an unstable world. Nothing will teach people to coexist more than preserving the very habitat they live in.

I know this may be cliche’ but is the older generation that jaded – or skeptical for that matter? Bottom line only? These guys didn’t even mention global warming in their discussion. Instead it veered off into “its a security issue – we buy oil from the people who hate us” Only 7% and that statement is a little shortsighted. Followed by “I believe we need to do whatever we need to do”. Including screwing with ecosystems on which we depend? Maybe these guys haven’t been to the beaches here in SoCal but as a relative newcomer they’ve disgusted me. More than once I’ve often come out of the water with tar marks on my surfboard and feet and left the beach with completely ruined sandals at the break in El Porto thanks to the Chevron Refinery. I don’t care if Green is the new trend, the bandwagon, cool, uncool – it just needs to happen. And the truth is we can all do so much from our own homes. Try starting at 2 of my favorite fun places – www.sundancechannel.com/thegreen and their sister site treehugger.com
Ps: the author does not claim perfection….and believes in technology

By the way here is what Chevron says about their refinery off El Porto

“Protecting the Water

The El Segundo Refinery is the only refinery in the Los Angeles Basin that receives the majority of its crude supply via ocean tankers. Crude oil is off-loaded into underwater pipelines at our offshore Marine Terminal located several miles offshore, ensuring no impact to residents or the coastline. This terminal is one of the safest, most efficient in operation, and can handle two tankers at once in order to ensure that the crude is transferred from ship to shore without spilling even a drop into the water.”

I guess next time I’ll go there to get my feet scrubbed

~ by John Zay on July 17, 2008.