Oil, risk and technology: Choices we need to make

The oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico should be a wake-up call to governments and energy companies, argues William Jackson, raising deep questions about our addiction to oil. Compensation may be paid for immediate damages - but what about the wider environmental harm?
The world changed one summer's day in 1858.
In a field in Pennsylvania, in the United States, the world's first specially constructed deep well struck oil.
The trickle of oil from the Earth, long extracted by humans in small amounts, became a torrent.

It is time to look again at the technology and risks involved in getting the oil our societies are addicted to
Relatively easy to find, extract, process, store and transport - and above all cheap - liquid oil quickly became our most important energy source to cook, heat, cool and transport things.
From plastics to supermarkets, and from globalised industry supply chains to the layout of our towns and cities, almost every aspect of human life has been radically altered over the past 150 years by oil.
Although cheap and plentiful oil has given many people choices and freedoms that never existed before, our addiction has been costly, measured in increased air and water pollution, rampant land use change, overharvesting of our seas, increasing greenhouse gas emissions and consequent climate change, acid rain and urban sprawl. More >>>>