A Spill to Drown Empty Promises

As the seemingly unstoppable gusher entered its sixth week, spewing 12,000 to 19,000 barrels of oil daily deep in the Gulf of Mexico, leaders in the Americas continue to focus their attention on the lessons to be drawn and the measures to be taken to prevent a similar disaster.

Brazilian experts have traveled to the area to take note, U.S. and Cuban officials have opened new channels of communication to discuss a coordinated response and President Obama ordered a suspension of virtually all offshore oil drilling activity pending a comprehensive safety review.

Whether welcome, necessary or too little and too late, these responses from the highest levels of government stand in stark contrast to the efforts committed to reducing oil dependence in the first place. In the Americas, in particular, there has been considerable talk of developing alternative energy sources, but little significant action.

And that’s what we've come to expect from regional leaders. Every time presidents and heads of state from the Americas get together these days, they vow to do more to reduce carbon emissions and mitigate environmental impact. Energy efficiency is a constant in every bilateral or multilateral meeting agenda and many pretty frameworks and declarations about clean energy have been issued.

Yet, the Americas remain decades behind Europe in emission standards. The average European emits already half the carbon of an average American, according to Steven Hill, program director at the New America Foundation. Thanks to visionary policies such as Germany’s law that requires energy companies to pay three to four times as much for kilowatts produced from unconventional sources, 8 percent of Germany’s power comes from wind. Windmills, tidal turbines, and solar panels now dot the European landscape.

Meanwhile, the Americas’ clean energy policy is mostly dotted by good intentions. As Annette Hester, a Canada-based economist and energy expert, put it, “bureaucracy is more concerned with having something to deliver every time there is a summit or bilateral meeting than with actually doing something substantial on any one issue.”

Environmental considerations alone should be enough to move the Americas beyond our addiction to fossil fuels and perhaps this devastating spill off our shores will prove to be the tipping point. But clean energy makes sense for many other reasons.
Duncan Wood, a Mexico-based political scientist and author of the new report “Environment, Development and Growth: US-Mexico cooperation in renewable energies” has found reasons to be hopeful. Bilateral cooperation on this front has produced jobs, new sources of alternative energy and economic opportunity for Mexico while satisfying a growing demand of such energy from the United States.

California, which will be obligated to consume 33 percent of its energy from clean energy sources by 2020, will represent a big part of such demand and private investors are recognizing the opportunity to meet it from the Mexican side of the border.
Oaxaca, for instance, enjoys one of the best sources of wind power in the world and recently has experienced a wind power revolution. Eight years ago the United States Agency of International Aid funded the mapping of the area providing crucial and reliable information for much more vigorous investment.

Ever since, Oaxaca has helped put Mexico at the forefront in Latin America in terms of wind energy development. By 2012, Mexico’s renewable energy will grow to satisfy 8 percent of total demand. And wind alone will represent almost 3 percent by 2010, a meteoric increase from 0.09 percent in 2008.
“Mexico has come a really long way in a relative short time,” said Wood. But despite the fact that public entities have benefited from such progress, this wouldn’t have occurred without private sector involvement.

Wood acknowledged that clean energy has been a very important part of Mexican President Felipe Calderon’s agenda. But this may have not been the case if his country’s oil industry were not in decline. Indeed, Mexico’s oil company PEMEX has seen its exports decline from 1793 barrels of oil daily in 2006 to 1279 barrels last year, a nearly 30 percent drop in only three years.
The crisis in the Gulf has reminded us of the terrible economic and environmental devastation of a single oil spill. It should also remind us of the lack of leadership from regional governments on alternative sources of energy.

One can only hope that beyond the damage to wildlife, marine life and the ecosystem, the worst spill in U.S. history will end the region's predilection for lip service and bring real action.