Do you know these images?
What to learn from the spill in the Gulf of Mexico?
Very similar, both images hold in common facts showing major environmental accidents, and have touched millions of people’ heart around the world. The first, in 1989, concerns the famous oil spill of the Exxon Valdez, Alaska. The second, published three weeks ago, shows a bird of Louisiana wrapped in oil leaked from the British Petroleum platform in the Gulf of Mexico. In the episode of the 1980s, 260 barrels of oil killed sea birds, otters, eagles, killer whales and billions of salmon eggs. In the latest case in American waters, the balance of harm to the ecosystem has not yet been closed. The episode teaches a few things for those who work with sustainability. It’s about time to invest in the transition of global energy production, today focusing on oil, to another cleaner. In a world predominantly powered by fossil fuels, this change will be in years, perhaps decades. But it must begin in now. One of the spokesmen of BP even said in an interview that the episode of the Gulf of Mexico has nothing to do with the discussion of sustainability, but with a technical failure and should be treated as an incident. I ask had it leaked bioetanol instead of oil, the environmental damage would be the same?
Besides its contributions to climate change by burning oil, its operation is rather an economic activity with high environmental risk. It remains for governments and societies to gauge the size of the risks to set up when, to what extension and in the name of what type of development, is this risk worth to be run.
Besides its contributions to climate change by burning oil, its operation is rather an economic activity with high environmental risk. It remains for governments and societies to gauge the size of the risks to set up when, to what extension and in the name of what type of development, is this risk worth to be run.
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