An Ocean of Oil, A Toxic Brew
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An older oil rig in the North Sea
Another oil spill, the worst in the North Sea in a decade according to several media sources. I didn’t bother to call Donald Trump when news of Shell’s North Sea oil spill broke on this side of the pond. He’s not taking my calls.
I would have asked him if he found it ironic that a week after publicly berating Scotland for wanting to site a wind farm off the coast of his golf development near Aberdeen, Shell dumped more than 55,000 gallons of oil into the North Sea out beyond where the wind farm would stand.
Big oil seems to work night and day adding layers of tarnish to their negative image.
I don’t know how expensive or difficult it is to properly maintain oil fields and pipelines in a safe and responsible fashion, I’m not in the oil business. The difficulties must be extreme and the costs prohibitive though, because some of the largest, wealthiest and most powerful corporations on earth are unable to keep this poisonous beast it its cage.
Every few weeks bring news of another escape, another ugly load of toxic crude oil in some greater or lesser quantity is added to the already overtaxed, over fished and slowly over heating ocean on which all of the life on earth ultimately depends.
Originally posted at Clean Technica: An Ocean of Oil, A Toxic Brew
The oil barons keep assuring us that their technological capabilities are state of the art, that drilling and extracting oil from the earth is under control and that should something go amiss they have plans to rectify any situation that arises.
They care, they tell us, they share our concerns for the environment. They have grandchildren too, goes the post spill PR mantra, recited sonorously for the press each time we’re presented with graphic evidence of their lack of concern.
Films and pictures of the oily black scud crowning the wave crests as they wash the tar globs to shore to cover the bodies of dead and dying seabirds, fish and mammals. Films that can’t show the wreckage of human lives, health and livelihoods, but its there.
They say the well has been shut down and the the leak is down to a few barrels a day and they are proceeding with repair and cleanup operations. Calming words to some I suppose, but I’m paranoid.
I think that their “cleanup” consists largely of the application of toxic dispersants to hasten the disappearance of the oil beneath the surface where its public relations threat is diminished even as its toxicity becomes more problematic.
Until we break our addiction to their products these reckless crimes will continue, week after week, spill after spill, until the ocean will no longer support the life that sustains us, until the last dollar and penny and pound is extracted from beneath the ground and sea, until we die choking in the poisonous porridge that once was our atmosphere.
Originally posted at Clean Technica: An Ocean of Oil, A Toxic Brew
Photograph: Wiki Commons by Isaac Newton Source: http://www.hmsbacchante.co.uk/gallery_page_1.htm
“The oil barons keep assuring us that their technological capabilities are state of the art, that drilling and extracting oil from the earth is under control and that should something go amiss they have plans to rectify any situation that arises.”
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Well, clearly, they are liars.
Yes they are… and worse.