Oil Spill in Mississippi River; Residents Drinking Bottled Water
The Coast Guard has shut down 98 miles of the Mississippi due to an oil spill by a Liberian barge with an apprentice pilot at the helm of the tug pulling it. Almost 420,000 gallons of industrial oil was dumped. The oil is “widely used as marine fuel, is heavier than diesel but lighter than crude, and it is likely to stick to rocks, trees and wildlife,” according to a CNN article.
We’re supposed to feel reassured that “the spill is much smaller than the ones that followed Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Let’s hope so. The Coast Guard estimated that more than 7 million gallons of oil were dumped into the Mississippi and nearby waterways then.” Considering the biggest oil spill of all, the The Exxon Valdez spill with more than 11 million gallons of crude oil, Katrina’s oil spill was worse than we know.
The CNN article went on to say that, “Wilma Subra, a chemist who advises the Louisiana Environmental Action Network, said the oil could endanger wildlife and eventually harm those residents who fish for a living.” No kidding.
If you want to view the number of oil spills by year and area, a great interactive tool can be found at: http://www.incidentnews.gov/map. You simply zone in on the parts of the world you want to check, and select the year. The map will pinpoint all of the oil spills.
We think everything is under control with oil spills that we have all this new technology to clean them up, but the fact is oil spills churn up for years to come and don’t affect certain marine life until years later either. Read about it at: http://www.endangeredspecieshandbook.org/aquatic_oil.php.
Continued dependence on any oil is not good for our future. Drilling now will not help us for at least 4 years. So what exactly is the intent to drill? In 4 years time surely we will have other means of sustaining our energy if we can be encouraged, not stymied, to innovate in an environmental direction. If and when we replace some of our existing source of fuel over the next fours years with wind and solar power and find that we can go without oil altogether, what will we do with all the oil we drilled for in 2008, sell it at high dollar to an under developed country that is not concerned with environmental issues as much as staying alive?
Or, is there some sort of push to allow those with oil leases in the Arctic to drill now without rhyme or reason to reap the current top dollar for that oil, and then sell off before alternatives actually become a reality? All oil companies have vested interest in alternatives now, even Exxon Mobil. Wouldn’t that be something new to see, an oil stock sell off?