The Gulf oil spill is massively bad. Over 3 million gallons of oil have leaked into the Gulf so far with the potential for millions more. In addition to the individuals who died in the accident leading to the leak, the spill has harmed the wildlife, the beaches, local businesses, area residents, vacationers, and many more. The cost of the cleanup and associated damages will rise into the billions.

It’s sobering, then, to realize that the Gulf spill would not even make the top 10 of human-caused environmental disasters. In the pursuit of energy and wealth, mankind has often acted as an abusive and oppressive occupier, rather than a responsible steward, towards Planet Earth. Perhaps nowhere is this as exemplified as in Chernobyl, Russia.

On April 25, 1986, reactor 4 at Chernobyl was scheduled to be shut down for maintenance. In connection with the shutdown procedure, Russian scientists devised a test of an emergency core cooling feature which had been installed to prevent a nuclear meltdown if the plant lost all external power. Unfortunately, in the process of conducting the test, the emergency mechanism failed, and the test itself helped trigger the meltdown. The end result was a catastrophic event which would render the area surrounding the Chernobyl plant uninhabitable for hundreds of years.

A Ukranian blogger has been riding her motorcycle near the Chernobyl “dead zone” for years and documenting her journeys with fascinating detail. She writes that radiation is low in the center of roads leading to Chernobyl (it’s twice as high at the edge of the roads, and if you step 1 meter off the road, it is 4 or 5 times higher), allowing her to travel relatively safely. She notes that asphalt does not hold radiation well, which explains why the center of the roadway is largely radiation-free.

Her site is well worth a read, even if only to get a sense of how horribly wrong things can go as we attempt to harness the powers of nature. It makes me believe more than ever that the ultimate answer to our energy problems will need to be something like solar or wind power which can be harvested without any of the risk associated with oil and gas exploration or nuclear fission.

While we can be happy we haven’t had to deal with a catastrophe of the scale of Chernobyl, that is of little comfort to those struggling to deal with the Gulf oil disaster right now. Even more frustrating is that weeks after the initial explosion causing the spill, engineers seem as far away from stopping the leaking as they were when the disaster began.

On a lighter note, one Mr. Stephen Colbert is on the job to find a solution to the Gulf spill. I am partial to the idea of using breaded juggalos delivered by trained dolphins: