Maybe They Should Ask the Kids

As the Gulf Oil spill spirals from human tragedy to catastrophe to debacle to environmental tragedy, it has become clear that no one knows how to handle the situation. They've called in everyone from James Cameron to Kevin Costner to fix the problem, but based on my conversations at home, they may do just as well by asking the children for ideas.

Image by DigitalGlobe-Imagery via Flickr

My 10-year-0ld initially just wanted to know why they couldn't "turn the oil off". Good question - perhaps that $500,000 backup valve that once seemed to expensive would have helped. Then he moved on to the robot idea. Why aren't there robots that can do these things? Another good question...

My younger son has been a big fan of the straw idea - just keep sucking the oil out until they get the next well built. He also wants to do a giant animal rescue. Specifically, he wants to round up all the fish, dolphins, whales, birds, etc. and move them to Puget Sound. Okay, maybe not doable, but at least his heart is in the right place!

For now, I'll focus on becoming less dependent on all that oil and making sure my kids do well in science so one day they'll be able to solve these problems before they become such disasters.