Lost 'Horizon' and the Price We Really Pay for Oil - The Mudflats

[Blue_In_AK]

This is well worth reading the whole post.

http://www.themudflats.net/2010/04/30/lost-horizon-and-the-price-we-really-pay-for-oil/

Alaskans are watching the news, like the rest of the nation watched us after the Exxon Valdez slammed into Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound more than 20 years ago. Helpless. Far away. Filled with grief. We look at our screens and monitor a growing black sheen of oil spread and we can’t do anything to stop it, and we don’t know where it’s going to go.

This is a picture I took at a huge Earth Day gathering in 1989 in downtown Manhattan, a few weeks after that spill. This time it’s British Petroleum. And in the Amazon it’s Chevron. And on the Niger Delta, it’s Shell. And the story plays out across the world. The names change, but the result is the same. We pay a heavy price for our refusal to change our ways.



The Associated Press just released an article with a headline that tightens the throats of those who were here, and watched the devastation of the ecosystem and communities on Prince William Sound unfold over decades.

<snip>

We cannot simply stop resource development, but we MUST find ways to take control of the nation’s energy and move forward with alternatives that do not involve our waters, and do not endanger the ocean and its fisheries. The Exxon Valdez, and The Horizon are cautionary tales that are supposed to warn us about drilling in the Chukchi Sea, extracting coal from Chuitna, and risking Bristol Bay with the Pebble Mine. Environmental disasters happen, but the ocean does not forgive us so quickly. Our mistakes are carried unchecked to delicate places where tourism, biodiversity, aesthetic beauty, fisheries, coral reefs, and livelihoods are lost. The ocean has a long memory.

One of the most sobering things about this accident is that it was not some old dilapidated oil rig. We cannot blame obsolescence, corrosion, or degradation. We can’t stand and say, “This would never happen any more.” The Horizon was state-of-the-art drilling technology. This was our best. And it’s now sitting five thousand feet below the surface hemorrhaging oil into another American fishery, and on to another coast line. Alaskans’ hearts break for you, Louisiana, because we can see into your future. We have a crystal ball.



<snip>

We need to ask ourselves what would happen if the name on the rig was not BP and was not Exxon, but was Shell? And what if the location was not the Gulf of Mexico, and not Prince William Sound, but the Chukchi Sea? Imagine the above scenario happening under a bed of pack ice, off the road system and hundreds of miles from the nearest city. It is not a pretty picture, and nobody seems to want to talk about that. We’re dealing with profits after all. The bottom line. The almighty dollar. Our corporate benefactors. The ones the Republicans like to remind us “pay 90% of the bills around here.” I remind them that they also create 100% of the oil spills.

And with their profits, they buy our politicians.

Our memories are short, and we pay the price for it. It took the Exxon Valdez to teach us that we need double-hulled tankers in Prince William Sound. And yet we don’t have anything that tells us we need them in Cook Inlet, the next body of water over. We learn our lessons hard.

Will the Horizon be our Chernobyl for off-shore drilling? Will the Everglades, and our southeast fisheries be the price we have to pay to learn that lesson? And how long will it take for the Gulf Coast to forgive us?

Drill, baby. Drill.

I am relieved to read this morning that President Obama is rethinking his offshore drilling policy. We MUST stop.

[Feron]

1. That was a very good article.

Thank you for sharing that.