Deepwater Horizon: Choosing Our Risks

This is Part 3 of a 3 part series on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill by Joana Tavares-Reager, oceanographer and marine policy expert.  As with all things we classify as disasters, it is sometimes hard to find the silver lining.  The aim of the series is to discuss the broader impacts of the spill and make a connection to each of our daily lives.

Crying over spilled oil

Like if wasn’t heartbreaking enough to have to deal with the horrendous short and long-term effects of this oil spill, we also have to watch political parties trying to use it to push their agendas, which mind you are often far from being environmental ones.

The right accuses the current President of being complacent. The left reacts by blaming the problem on the “cozy relationship” oil companies have in fact enjoyed with our precedent Administrations, while most of us just watch it from the middle, puzzled.  Who’s to blame?

I would agree with some claims that the Federal Administration has not reacted to the disaster promptly enough. There was no substantial, efficient plan of action to deal with an oil spill of such magnitude, and the EPA and the Coast Guard were forced to just sit and watch BP to carry out whatever best management practices they could come up with on the spot. Some say that is due to the fact that an event of such magnitude has never happen before, but that’s no excuse.

If a government authorizes a company to drill for oil in their jurisdiction, that government should be fully aware of all the risks associated with that activity, including the very unlikely but potentially disastrous ones. An efficient emergency response plan for any outcome should have been developed beforehand and if some of the possible outcomes turned out to be unmanageable, like the one we are witnessing now, then the project should not have been approved. The reality is that the governmental agencies did not know what to do. It seems like they let the BP deal with the problem and by the time they decided to call some shots the situation was already out of control

That been said, we should understand that blaming this entire mess on the current Federal Administration is a mistake and one with serious consequences for the future, because it exempts us, citizens driving around our illuminated cities, from the many public decisions that we have been making for decades and that have led us to a calamity like this.

Russian roulette

The bottom line is the following: as a society, we took way too many risks and totally missed the boat on this one.  It is very much like many other lessons we had to learn the hard way in the past. Smoking cigarettes increase one’s chance of developing cancers. Driving drunk increases the chances of car accidents. Playing Russian roulette increases one’s chances of dying.  And sadly for all of us, humans who depend on oil to power their homes, industries and cars, extracting this toxic substance from the bottom of ocean increases the risk of killing a lot of sea animals, disrupting natural ecosystems and screwing up local economies for a long, long time.

The jury is still out on who the immediate culprits are, but in the big picture we, as a society, are still taking the risks that these preventive steps may go wrong. And that is in spite of the fact that perfect substitutes for the whole oil exploration process already exist.

The technology to power our existence through non-polluting, lower environmental impact means, such as solar and wind power, has been developed and can be economically accessible if it receives the economic incentives that are still diverted to the oil industry in the form of subsides.  And let’s not forget that the prevention of oil spills is only one reason to invest in solar and wind power.  We are the mist of a climate crisis and can’t afford burning anymore oil anyways.

University of Delaware Marine Policy Professor James Corbett, an expert in shipping-related policies and environmental issues, has launched a website that reports the magnitude of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in terms of the lost uses and lost fuel on a daily basis. Even more importantly for our discussion here, Corbett attests to how risky the decision of investing and approving offshore drilling for oil is.  In straight forward terms, Corbett explains how individuals and society evaluate risk when making choices and poses some important questions, such as:

• Should the government require a lower risk of failure for future permits?
• Should the public expect industry and government to be more “risk-averse” than an “expected-value” decision maker?
• Can we pursue conservation measures that will help reduce the demand for new petroleum sources so we can choose to drill in risky places less often?

The take home lesson

It is time we think carefully about how our everyday choices about what we consume, drive and support affect the world around us.

Support alternative sources of energy and reduce your oil consumption. In the next elections, let’s try to think about our candidates from a different perspective, one that takes into consideration their level of commitment to the immediate development of alternatives to oil.  Look for candidates talking about serious, large- scale wind farm projects and support programs for the development of electric automobiles that can replace our current fleet within 10 to 15 years.

There are lots of candidates out there talking about our current environmental problems but very few are actually pinpointing solutions. So maybe we should start laying them out for them. Lets’ educate ourselves about alternative sources of energy, and then inform our communities and our politicians as well.

Let’s learn real lessons from this oil spill; lessons that we can in fact, take to our homes and into our lives.

2 Responses to “Deepwater Horizon: Choosing Our Risks”

1. Joe Earth says:

   August 23, 2010 at 5:06 am

   I agree that oil dependence creates great risks for the environment and for local economies (not to mention unhealthy foreign entanglements.)

   But we have known this for a long time.

   Do you really think that once this has all been cleaned up people won’t just go back to business as usual.

   Reply
   • Joana Tavares-Reager says:

     August 23, 2010 at 1:52 pm

     Hello Joe. Yes, unfortunately, it is likely that most people will simply go back to their normal businesses once the visible effects of this oil spill have been “eliminated”. That’s exactly why I decided to write this article – to alert to the fact that we should try to use this terrible disaster as a catalyst to a revolution in the way society perceives the risks associated with oil exploitation. I agree with you that we have known about the great risks and harms that our oil dependence imposes on the environment for a long time (the greatest harm being climate change), but I don’t think the general public actually “perceives” these risks as being high (at least not in the same way they perceive the high risks associated with say, playing Russian roulette). And I think that is because we normally don’t hear enough about it, we don’t see enough visually striking footage that can help our brains to connect cause and effect, as we have seen for other high risk activities such as driving under the influence or even smoking. So, my hope is that we, scientists, journalists and environmental bloggers, can help society to bridge this gap between our intellectual knowledge of oil related risks and our emotional response to them. Thank you for your comment and I hope you come back often.