The effects of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska can still be found along the once pristine beaches in Prince William Sound more than 20 years after the accident, according to a recent study done by the Pew Environment Group. That spill provided a mass of scientific data on how spilled oil affects marine life, ecosystems, coastal communities, fisheries and subsistence economies.
If it cannot be sealed, the recent spill in the Gulf of Mexico under the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig might exceed the Exxon Valdez catastrophe. The accident claimed 11 lives. And it happened in the heart of one of the most productive U.S. marine fisheries, and during the height of the spring migration of birds from Central and South America to the U.S. interior. The coast of Louisiana has about 40 percent of the nation’s coastal wetlands. It’s a key area for wildlife. The Gulf Coast wetlands threatened by the spill are the nursery for about half of America’s shrimp, source of human livelihoods.
The event is having impacts on politics and public policies, just as the Alaska spill and the one off the coast of Santa Barbara, Calif., did 20 and 40 years ago. The California spill helped launch the first Earth Day.
The credibility of the oil industry, which repeatedly assured us that a large-scale disaster could never happen again given new industry safeguards, is as wrecked and sunk as the rig itself. In applying for its permit, BP certified that the maximum potential spill from any disaster at the site would not exceed 162,000 gallons a day. By one week after the accident, leakage rate had already climbed past 200,000 a day.
BP apparently did not bother to install -- and U.S. regulations don’t require -- a backup device to provide another protection level in case the “fail-safe” shutoff valve failed, which is exactly what occurred. Brazil requires such a device, and oil companies like Shell install it routinely. BP didn’t because, at $500,000, it was “too expensive.”
Two of this spring’s biggest energy stories -- the explosion and spill under the Deepwater Horizon oil rig and the Obama administration’s approval of the East Coast’s first big offshore wind farm -- demonstrate our choices in the keenest way
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced April 28 that the farm, Cape Wind off the coast of Massachusetts, would get his department’s go-ahead.
The White House also pledged that Obama’s plans to end a long-standing moratorium on offshore oil and natural gas drilling would be put on hold until the cause of the explosion at the Deepwater Horizon rig is fully investigated and known.
We can embrace the Senate’s energy and climate bill, to be debated this summer, which puts a penalty on pollution and propels the transition to the clean, safe energy of the 21st century, or we can continue the addiction to the energy of the 20th century.
How do fossil fuels hurt us? Let’s count the ways -- to our health, the environment, communities and national security. We must rethink our faith in an industry that always promises new technology will make big disasters things of the past.
What’s more, these events offer lessons about the role of government.
BP, the company that leased the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, and some of its sister companies in the oil business, have long sought a voluntary “trust us,” self-regulatory framework. BP and other companies fought efforts by the federal Minerals Management Service to impose tougher safety standards for offshore drilling, arguing for the voluntary approach and asking for people’s goodwill.
People in the Gulf States are now learning -- as people in West Virginia learned earlier this year when 29 coal miners died in an explosion at the Upper Big Branch mine -- that limited government can, and often does, lead to pollution and disasters as regulations are loosened and oversight fails.
This is a national emergency. Enough is enough. While oil and coal companies rake in billions in profits, we are left to clean up.
Recent coal mining and oil disasters should be a wake-up call and a turning point. It’s time to wholeheartedly embrace the kind of clean energy solutions that already exist and end our dependence on dirty, dangerous fossil fuels.
Of the current Gulf of Mexico oil spill, former Sierra Club director Carl Pope said: “Some will still argue vigorously that America should turn its coastlines over to the oil industry. If they should prevail, at least we won’t be able to say it was because our memories had faded since Santa Barbara.”
