Tag Archive for 'oil spill'

Philippe Cousteau Jr on our polluted oceans

Published on June 2, 2010 in Environment. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

Planet Green’s Chief Ocean correspondent Philippe Cousteau Jr. sat down with Bill Maher on Friday to discuss the seriousness of ocean pollution.

The Florida Keys, third longest barrier reef in the world, is a dead zone. Ninety percent of the big fish, the tuna, the sharks, and other things, are already gone in the oceans. There’s a dead zone in the Gulf Of Mexico every summer the size of New Jersey, where there’s not enough oxygen for things to live. So it’s not a question of ‘Can the oceans take any more?’ The oceans can’t take any more. They couldn’t take any more fifty years ago. The question is, when are we going to stop?

Watch the full interview here.

BP Oil Drilling Fail and the American people

Published on June 1, 2010 in Environment. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Unsurprisingly, BP’s “Top Kill” maneuver, consisting of plugging the oil gusher with heavy mud and kill shots of shredded tires and golf balls, failed. And now the failed drilling zone is spilling an Exxon Valedez’s worth of oil in the Gulf of Mexico every three and a half days.

Unplugged, it will take 7 years for 2.1 billion gallons of oil to drain from pressurized undersea site. That’s roughly 3500 Olympic swimming pools’ worth of oil poured into the fragile Gulf Coast ecosystem. With nearly 4000 oil and gas platforms in the vicinity (as of 2005), we risk further devastation daily.  In 2008, Hurricane’s Katrina and Rita leveled 113 such platforms.

While we can hope repercussions for BP will be steep, the odds are that it, much like the banking system, is too big to fail. The EPA could do as little as provide a slap on the corporate wrists to, at the opposite end of the spectrum, pull the plug on its US operations and federal contracts, which account for 39% of the company’s oil and gas revenue annually.  Given BP has 22,000 oil and gas wells in the US, punishing BP would also be punishing local economies that rely the jobs BP creates and the disposable incomes that those jobs yield. Oil-coated greed does not scale well when a company reaches a size that allows it to act  as it pleases, knowing that there’s very little regulators can do to enforce compliance and punitive measures

Undoubtedly, the government has culpability in creating the situation.  When BP filed with the U.S. Minerals Management Service, their exploration plans offered assurances that the company could handle a spill 60 times larger than what is currently playing out in the Gulf, while neglecting to provide any details as to what could be done to staunch the flow  from a damaged well head.   Government regulators meant to be on the side of the American people should have asked for more detailed filings before further consideration and licenses were granted.    Which of the other platforms in the Gulf are ticking eco-bombs waiting to self-destruct, having been approved with such loose emergency plans in place?

There is one upside to this disaster.  As more photos (here, here and here) or the environmental impact of this spill makes their way online and into newscasts.   The importance of environmental stewardship is, once again, trending as an important environmental issue.  Per a new Gallup poll, Americans are realizing the cost of our oil dependency, even in the most superficial manner, and recognizing we actually need a planet to live on.

Unsurprisingly, as Mother Jones points out, self-identified Republicans still overwhelming support sourcing energy over keeping the planet a healthy enough place for the people living on it.

Hubris getting ahead of technology

Published on May 9, 2010 in Environment and Politics. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

You’d think that the felling of the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf would be cause for rethinking off shore drilling.

Seafood is a $1.8 billion industry in Louisiana, with another $1 billion in retail sales  driven by recreational fishing.  If the estimates about possible environmental damage are proven conservative, Gulf Coast states are in for a world of financial pain, up to $4.3 billion in losses according to BBVA Compass Bank economist Nathaniel Karp:

Karp said Florida has the most at stake, facing potential losses of $3 billion alone, including $2.8 billion in tourism, $18 million in commercial fishing and $138 million in recreational fishing…

Louisiana could face economic losses of $948 million, including $880 million in tourism, according to Karp’s estimates. Louisiana’s commercial fishing business stands to lose $31 million, while its recreational fishing industry could lose $37 million, he projects.

And if the drip, drip, drip of information about this spill is anything to go by, the numbers may turn out to be much worse.  Christian Science Monitor reporting suggests upwards of 25,000 barrels of oil per day are spewing into the Gulf instead of the 5,000 barrel estimate being used in data crunching, a number which could skew upwards even further if the damaged piping is further compromised by the flow of gritty oil.   With that oil pocket rumored to be tens of millions of gallons full, an unplugged flow could spread for months.

Such projections take on more significance now that the first attempt to dome the spill failed this weekend.   It also still remains to be seen if the mushroom cloud of oil will reach the current that could pull the oil up the southeastern seaboard.

Our nation’s top experts are now suggesting “stuffing shredded tires, golf balls and other debris into the well’s failed blowout preventer,” while they work on a differently-shaped dome to repeat their attempts at sealing the leak.   Can we really justify offshore drilling if we aren’t truly capable of foreseeing and planning for the consequences that could cause permanent damage to delicate coastal ecosystems and our food chain? Can’t we admit that some technology is still beyond the scope of our knowledge?

Coastal citizens are realizing the stakes of such acts.   Support for offshore drilling in Florida (35%) has dropped precipitously (from 61% in 2008).

And yet politicians seem to be doubling down on their efforts to fill oil coffers, instead of promoting alternative energy sources that could yield new job sectors to partially replace the lost manufacturing jobs of this recession.  For instance, Virginia Governor Robert McDonnell, who seems to continue jerking further and further right since his election, is pushing to drill off the coast of his state as soon as possible.

Then there are the conservative talk heads like Bill Kristol, who suggests drilling CLOSER to shore would limit the danger of offshore drilling, and Sarah Palin who still considers drill, baby, drill to be prudent and necessary for energy independence.

Indeed, we need to create a platform for home grown energy, independent of the Middle East, but real leadership on energy would take us to the next generation of energy creation: one that demonstrates that those who grace the top of the food chain have the awareness that environmental stewardship is a necessary factor in moving society and the human race forward in a sustainable manner.

We’re not particularly good stewards of anything when we can’t even acknowledge the boundaries of what we know before aggressively drilling in the abyss.