If we put our hearts into it...

The following is an excerpt from a spectacular history of offshore drilling in The Economist:

To give an idea of the difficulty of deepwater drilling, Mr. Walker uses an analogy. "Imagine a large offshore oil rig as a match box," he says. Next, imagine the matchbox on top of a two-storey building, with the upper floor filled with water and the lower floor filled with rock, sand and, in some cases, salt. Striking an oil reservoir with a drill pipe is then like hitting a coin at the base of the building with a strange of human hair. The penalties for getting it wrong are enormous. An industry rule of thumb puts the cost of drilling a deepwater "dry hole--a well that does not strike oil--at around $100m; BP says it can be as high as $200m.

What's my point? That we are capable of tremendous engineering achievements. The tragic loss of life, environmental devastation and economic disturbance caused by the BP oil spill in the Gulf are reminders of our need to refocus our efforts to similar engineering challenges in clean technology. The above analogy is a conceptually accurate metaphor that describes the degree of the challenge we face in decarbonizing the economy. The coin represents a civilization constructed on clean infrastructure and technology, and the human hair represents the human effort and skill required to achieve a clean energy future.