I have been watching the unfolding awareness about the methane leak going on just down the coast from me in Porter Ranch with a mixture of sadness and disgust. This is a human-caused environmental disaster that many experts are likening to the BP oil spill in the gulf in 2010, and you don’t have to be an expert to know this event will have far reaching consequences.
To sign a petition asking for Obama to step in and demand action both in legislative regulation and from SoCal Gas, please click here.
At the beginning of the month, Governor Jerry Brown finally declared a state of emergency. Since the videos from the original discovery back in October were released, estimates say that close to 90,000 metric tons have been release into the atmosphere.
Who knows if the leak had been going on before then? SoCal Gas might.
There are many articles on the subject at this point, so the summary is that SoCal Gas had been using an underground cavern in Alisos Canyon as a storage space for methane. A well casing failed and gas began to rise up through natural cracks in the ground to make its way to our atmosphere.
This is alarming for many reasons, but I’ll give you three to ponder:
Firstly; Methane is an extremely potent greenhouse gas and this much of it going into the atmosphere is only speeding up the process of trapping heat in lower levels of atmosphere as it continues.
Secondly; This leak is alarmingly close to so many people. Many families have relocated already, and with an increasing area of effect this disaster could begin to encompass residents of Los Angeles only 30 miles away.
Lastly; The part that makes me feel the most angry is that SoCal Gas projects it will take months for them to even begin to cap off the gas leak. In the meantime we’ll keep watching a Fukushima-esque slow poisoning of our air. You can find a methane counter on this website.
Now I come to that part of my blog where I remind you this is another baffling failure on the part of men, both in protecting human life and in TELLING THE TRUTH about what is going on. Our technological “advances” do take us somewhere but not always without risk.
To see what we have to say about how men are poor handlers of responsibility, check out our book and study guides for The Word 2.0.
Sound the alarm, hold each other accountable and maybe we can find ways to stop this from happening in the future.
Yours in Unity,
Sonya
