A Move From Black Death to Sustainability?

The numbers are beyond comprehension for the global catastrophe that continues to unfold in the Gulf of Mexico.

Eleven human deaths.  Thirty species of birds and more than 400 species of other kinds of wildlife threatened.  At least 3 million gallons of oil, creating an oil slick that’s 130 miles long and 70 miles wide by 17 May 2010.  Nearly 600,000 gallons of an oil dispersant called Corexit to break it up.  Twelve thousand Louisiana residents who have filed for unemployment since the spill began.  As of 14 June 2010, the confirmed cost: $1.6 billion.

And one other nagging statistic: 30% of the nation’s oil production is derived from the Gulf of Mexico.

These numbers stand as unequivocal condemnation of BP, an oil company already found twice guilty of negligence here in the United States.  At its Texas refinery in 2005, a massive explosion occurred that killed 15 workers and injured 170 others; the company was fined $87 million for negligence.  Just a year later, BP was cited for leaking 4800 barrels of oil into Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay and was fined another $20 million for ignoring opportunities to prevent the spill.  One can hardly imagine another antagonist in this story so uncaring, so removed, so profit-driven as this company: the corporate equivalent of the Marquis St. Evremonde in Dicken’s A Tale of Two Cities.  BP is, perfectly, the image of the uncaring, even predatory aristocrat of the ancien regime “across the pond.”  Of course, I don’t think there’s any single multinational petroleum company with its hands clean; they all seem cast from the same nefarious mold.  A quick look across the globe, especially into remote areas of Amazonia, corroborates my umbrella condemnation of the entire lot wherever they haul out the Earth’s guts.

What especially concerns me about this oil spill is the volume of dispersant spread so dispassionately across the Gulf’s waters.  Recently, one toxicologist called dispersants “deodorized kerosene.”  EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and NOAA Administrator Dr. Jane Lubchenco admitted in a recent conference that the effects of the dispersants are largely unknown.  At best, the chemicals seem an environmental tradeoff; at worst, their hoped-for “cure” could prove to be as lethal as the “disease” itself!  Senator Lisa Murkowski, a Republican from Alaska, asked why chemical dispersants used to break up the oil were not tested prior to the incident.  Senator Robert Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat, said at a hearing in May, “What I see is a company not prepared to address the worst-case scenario but a company that is flailing around, trying whatever [it thinks] of next.”  Would any of us administer an untested medicine to our children suffering from ill health?  Why then would we think it acceptable to apply such untested substances to an entire ecological system?

As an undergraduate at VA Tech, I completed an independent research project on petroleum pollution and waterfowl, specifically 6-week-old mallard ducklings, through the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.  I divided hundreds of animals into four groups: a control group confined for 8 hours in a trough of clean water, a second group confined to a trough of water with crude oil on its surface, a third to a trough with a mix of crude oil and Corexit dispersant, and a fourth to a trough with dispersant only.  When I had designed the study and sought approval, one of the on-site scientists informed me that it seemed an unnecessary waste of taxpayer money because the research had been completed long ago.  I retorted that the supposed studies, all published as multi-color, glossy handouts, were conducted by a USA-based petroleum corporation with no peer-review or independent confirmation.  When this same scientist observed my experimental results at the end of the day, he changed his attitude instantly, swallowed his pride, and helped to initiate a new phase of federal research on dispersants.  The outcome of my little study?  All control animals survived, all crude-oil animals survived, about half of the animals exposed to the oil-dispersant mix survived, and all dispersant animals died.  That’s right: 100% mortality for those mallards exposed solely to Corexit!  To be fair, I used an early version of Corexit no longer applied in the field.  It’s discouraging, however, that so many years later we’re still asking the same question: why weren’t these chemicals tested prior to their application in the Gulf of Mexico?

It’s almost enough for me to lose faith that we can EVER live sustainably with our ancient planet, especially its jaw-dropping, irreplaceable richness of species and ecosystems.  How many more warning signs do we need to reform our appetites for nonrenewable natural resources?  Three decades ago, we had the oil embargo.  Then Exxon Valdez.  Now BP.  And how about those horrific stories from the remote corners of the Earth where such companies too-often operate covertly without much public scrutiny?

It’s time that we all learned our lesson from the “Black Death” spreading across the Gulf of Mexico:  It’s an international failure of the highest order.  Let us always remember 20 April 2010 as a day of infamy for the Republic, the starting point of reform – real reform – in our nation’s energy policy as we move toward individual and collective sustainable solutions.  Enough is enough.