20 years ago, on this magazine’s cover was a compelling rendering of the face of a man in the shape of South America (prophetically just under the Gulf of Mexico) crying his eyes out, with the caption below it reading “What On Earth Are We Doing”. Today, the artist wouldn’t limit his imagination to one continent but indeed our entire planet.
The horrific disaster in the Gulf of Mexico brings us all to heartbreak and tears. But the only difference, catastrophic though it is, between the tragedy of the Gulf spill and the ecological devastation going on worldwide from fossil fuel extraction is one of scale, and spills or disasters of one size or another are occurring almost daily. Here are just a few of the recent calamities.
OIL
- On May 25, 2010, a collision of an oil tanker has caused at least 18,000 barrels of oil to spill into the Straits of Singapore, one of the world’s busiest sea lanes
- The next day another spill of up to several thousand barrels of crude oil occurred 100 miles southeast of Fairbanks
- Earlier in May, there was a break in the trans-Alaska pipeline resulting in thousands of barrels of spilled crude
- On May 12, 2010, there was another major spill from Exxon-Mobile in the Niger delta, a place once pristine, but now an oil soaked environmental nightmare
In the North Pacific Ocean there is a large circular current known as a gyre, a perfectly normal system of rotating ocean currents. This one however is known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, for it’s a spinning vortex of trash from plastic marine litter. Its exact size is unknown but could be as large as the continental U.S. Remember, ALL plastics are petroleum based.
COAL
- On April 5th an explosion in a Massey Energy mine in West Virginia killed 29 miners
- A dynamite explosion on May 22nd, in Chenzhou city in central China killed 17 miners and in late March a flood in another mine in China killing 37
- Northern Turkey experienced a methane gas explosion on May 17 that killed 30 miners
- On May 8, 2 mine explosions in Siberia resulted in the deaths of 66
In December 2008, in Kingston, Tennessee a massive pond holding coal ash burst, releasing a billion gallons of muddy, gray coal ash loaded with arsenic, lead and other contaminants into the surrounding communites.
George W. Bush famously said “we are addicted to oil”. He could have added coal as well, for at present both of these fuels are essential to our modern civilization and comfortable lifestyles. Is it an unshakable addiction? Do we have to read headlines of yet another, even larger oil spill, mine explosion or tanker collision with the attendant loss of life and environmental destruction? Must we indefinitely witness images of oil-soaked birds, fish and turtles, and sacrifice our bountiful ecosystems and our clean air so we can continue to heat our homes and drive our cars and buy plastic packaged groceries based on these inherently destructive fossil fuels?
The petroleum and mining industries continuingly assure us they can extract these fuels safely and cleanly.
THEY CAN NOT. There is no such thing as “Clean Coal” or foolproof drilling rigs, or tanker captains who won’t get drunk and run a ship aground in another Prince William Sound.
The energy industry is wealthy and powerful and lobbies hard against renewables, carbon taxes and environmentally beneficial regulations. For a tiny fraction of their net income, these companies make sizable campaign contributions and even legislators of high integrity are hard pressed not to vote in the interest of big oil and big coal. They also fund pseudo scientific “think tanks” that raise doubt in peoples’ minds that these are real problems. Meanwhile the International Energy Agency reports they receive $550 billion in government subsidies worldwide.