The BP Oil Spill: Pollution of the Waters and Minds
The environmental disaster of our generation occurred in the Gulf of Mexico, 20 April 2010. The oil spill resulting from an explosion and collapse of an oil rig is the worst oil spill in the United States since the Exxon Valdez in 1989, but this disaster in the Gulf is on pace to dwarf the scale. 4 weeks afterwards, no one is quite sure of how much oil is leaking from the sea floor and executives from BP have avoided efforts to measure it accurately; perhaps they know that it is far worse than we think.
Louisiana and Alaska are the nation's two largest fisheries. What effect will this have on our economy and food supply?
How long will it take to recover? A simple estimate is to look at the time it took to recover from Exxon Valdez oil spill. After the oil tanker ran aground and leaked ____ gallons (___ liters) of oil, an estimated xxxx birds and fish were killed. The commercial fishing industry was decimated. It took xxxxx months before a clean catch could be brought to market.
In the Gulf, the estimate is more difficult. Assuming that the flow is staunched, we're dealing with much more oil over a much larger area. One way to make the estimate is to assume that an equal amount of time will be required once the oil flow is stopped. Another simple estimate would be to calculate that X gallons of oil requires Y days to clean up. A more thorough estimate would take into account the geography and oceanography of the spill site. The fact that the oil has spilled to a much wider area will increase the amount of time to clean it up.
What does "clean" mean? It doesn't mean things go back to how they were. More likely it means that some rubber stamp somewhere green-lights whatever efforts are made as being "adequate", but this does not describe the the actual damage to the ecosystems. W
Our petroleum based economy is bound to encounter accidents and interruptions in its supply chain. That is simply the nature of extracting huge amounts of a volatile liquid from deep within the ground. What is regrettable, however, is when specific safety measures were avoided or not enforced, largely due to the corrupting influence of industry lobbyists. In the end we land ourselves in a disaster scenario that it seems no one had the foresight to prepare for. A simple preparatory thought experiment could have helped identify the most vulnerable aspects of any deep sea drilling operation and industry professionals could have come up with some scale of the consequences for any particular failure point. Getting a safe estimate on these types of things really isn't rocket science. Ask how much oil would come spewing out of the ground if this oil rig were to collapse, or if this seal were to fail, or if this pipeline were to rupture. There are many aspects of this that would be difficult to predict, but the point would be to get a range of damages in order to reduce risk. In the case of the oil rig, I don't feel that was done.
Lastly, one of the most insidious forces working against progress in this area is the force of ignorance. I'm taking direct aim at conservative media which has in the past few weeks broadcast theories and opinions that have ranged from the unlikely to the absurd. Rush Limbaugh suggested that the deep water drilling was caused by environmentalists who opposed easier drilling sites (never mind that our oil supply is in decline and across the world, oil wells are being drilled in more and more inaccessible locations). Glenn Beck inferred that environmental activists sabotaged the oil rig in order to gain support for their anti-oil agenda (never mind that zero evidence has been found to support this claim). This type of ignorance is toxic and contagious for a populace who is starved on facts and apparently unable to discern truth or exercise logic. We can measure the amount of oil spewing from a well and the damage it causes, but it's difficult to measure the damaged caused by the infernal sewage from the mouths of fools over the willing airwaves; such talk has no place in a solution-minded society. But perhaps, like our waters, our society and mentality are becoming irrecoverably polluted.
