The Price of Gas
Nowadays we often find it gruesome to walk to our local supermarket and instead use our cars. We sometimes forget or don’t realize what actual harm we are doing. I say this because since we drive everywhere we are in constant need of gasoline to power our cars. With this comes a billion-dollar industry that can damage air quality and weaken the lives of thousands.
In my hometown of Wilmington, California there seems to be a continuous disaster that does not get enough coverage as it should. The disaster in progress is the never-ending of refining of oil to make gas that we consume every day. In Wilmington alone, there are six oil refineries that spew out clouds of smoke on a daily basis. Every once in a while, these refineries tend to leak poisonous gases without any warning. One example is the Tesoro refinery. This refinery alone is responsible for the production of around 104,500 barrels of crude oil a day. According to the US Energy Information Agency, refineries in the United States produced an average of about 20 gallons of motor gasoline and about 11 gallons of ultra-low sulfur distillate fuel oil from one 42-gallon barrel of crude oil. Furthermore, this refinery is key in the US economy, but on June 28, 2017, there was a leakage of a dangerous chemical substance that polluted the air. According to an online report of the spill from the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, at about roughly 1:30 p.m. a chemical called diethanolamine was discovered leaking from an underground pipeline at the Tesoro Refinery. Diethanolamine is a Hydrogen sulfide and is an “extremely flammable gas” that in low concentrations smells similar the scent of rotten eggs, according to a federal Occupational Safety & Health Administration fact sheet. At high concentrations, the poisonous, potentially lethal gas cannot be smelled and may cause death after as little as one breath. Moreover, the people of the neighboring communities are left to sitting ducks to the disaster. Many not able to move out of the neighborhood because of financial issues and emotional connections they have to their homes, respectively.
Furthermore, these types of leaks aren’t just unique to the United States. For instance, in the novel Animal’s People by Indra Sinha, we follow a 19-year-old orphan of Khaufpur, born a few days before the 1984 Bhopal disaster. The Bhopal disaster was a gas leak incident on the night of December 2, 1984 at the Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL) pesticide plant in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India. It was considered as of 2010 to be the world’s worst industrial disaster. Over 500,000 people were exposed to methyl isocyanate gas. The highly toxic substance made its way into and around the underdeveloped towns located near the plant. Moreover, the dangerous substance caused many birth and health defects to the people of the surrounding neighborhoods. Animal is a prime example of the birth defects, having a twisted back causing him to have to walk on all fours. Many of the affected citizens of India protested against the UCIL and demanded reparations for the damage the leak had done. It took 5 years to finally win a lawsuit which paid around $470 million to the people who were hurt by the disaster. It is even sad to think that this legal battle was a long and hard process that innocent people who were affected had to go through.
Ultimately, these two events are in a way similar. We as a community can sometimes be blind to the capitalism that goes on around us. Is it worth it to slowly kill people in poverty-stricken neighborhoods to provide the country with gasoline that our cars can consume? Well it depends who you ask. In the eyes of big industries, we are just another life that happen to settle down in the wrong neighborhood. To me, I see this as a genocide that is slowly occurring. We as a community and nation need to recognize the real dangers of refining fossil fuels and need to reduce use of them. We need to look towards the future because the lives of millions are on the line and also the stabilization of the world is also in jeopardy. These refineries release a large amount of greenhouse gases that affect our global climate. Overtime, if we keep as business as usual we can potentially have hotter days in the summer and colder days in the winter. Even the possibility of having a continuous change of temperature on a daily basis is plausible. Furthermore, we need to change our ways and move towards a cleaner source of energy such as solar energy. Until we make the switch, countless lives will continually be affected by the emissions of these refineries.
