The Birds and the BPs

BP is sadly just one of many players in the appalling offshore drilling picture, the latest oil-soaked pelicans among many victims.

It has now been two months since the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded, killing 11 people and spreading perhaps 100,000 barrels of oil daily into the Gulf of Mexico. The full impact on the environment and wildlife remains to be seen, but already it is devastating. The ghastly photographs of oil-covered birds are only a small indication of the full disaster. Vulnerable sperm whales, dolphins, sea turtles, migrating birds, and spawning fish populations will all be devastated. Critically endangered species such as the small-tooth sawfish may become extinct, and the micro-organisms that are the basis of ocean life will be poisoned. Entire ocean ecosystems are endangered. With major hurricanes predicted in the coming season, the oil will be spread even further, with unknown consequences.

Clearly, BP is directly responsible. The company lobbied hard against safety regulations, spending millions to avoid anything that might reduce short-term profits. It argued that it didn’t need the acoustic switch, a remote shut-off valve that could have stopped the well. These safety switches are mandated in Brazil and Norway, but when the U.S. government tried to introduce them in off-shore drilling operations, BP and other oil companies protested because they didn’t want to spend the money required.

However, blaming BP gives us only half the picture. The corporation was merely playing by the rules of capitalism, which emphasize short-term gain before all else. And it was making its profits by providing the cheap oil that we all demand.

Although President Obama ordered a suspension of all offshore drilling in the Gulf, business continues as usual in Canada. Despite protests from environmentalists, Chevron is now drilling exploration wells at unprecedented depths off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador with the endorsement of government. Just as BP did, Chevron claims this is all perfectly safe and has rejected calls to simultaneously drill relief wells. But if it isn’t as safe as Chevron predicts, it would take months to drill such a relief well, while oil would spread thousands of kilometres.

Chevron, one of the world’s biggest corporations, with billions in profits, has an appalling environmental record. This ranges from its devastation of the Amazon, where the company faces 30,000 litigants in the world’s largest environmental lawsuit, to its Gorgon natural gas plant located at a sea-turtle nesting beach in Western Australia. That project is expected to kill more than a thousand turtles and wreck the local marine habitat. Meanwhile, Chevron plans to build more plants in the region, destroying other turtle populations.

Of course, Chevron is not alone in its rapacity. Royal Dutch/Shell is responsible for thousands of oil spills in Nigeria and has completely poisoned the environment for human communities and wildlife in Ogoniland, spilling about 1.5 million tons of oil into the Niger Delta and making it one of the world’s most severely damaged ecosystems.

As oil continues to gush into the ocean, the response has been completely inadequate. A California-based environmental group, Matter of Trust, has been collecting human hair from barbershops to mop up the oil. The International Bird Rescue Research Centre says it has 20 response team specialists working in Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida, and in the first week of June reported that they had collected 380 birds still alive to be soaped off and released.

While the efforts of those individuals who mobilize themselves to help wildlife are to be commended, we need to recognize that these measures are not enough to deal with the size of the problem. We need much stronger regulation of corporations. The Sierra Club has called for a moratorium on offshore drilling, but we should go beyond this and end offshore drilling entirely. It is simply too dangerous and an indication of our hubris that we think we can manage the risks. As Rick Hyndman, a senior policy adviser with the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, acknowledged, there are always going to be mistakes in these operations, similar to what happened in the Gulf of Mexico.

Beyond that, we need to reduce our dependency on fossil fuels. The U.S. has the highest oil consumption in the world and is the biggest importer of oil, including from Alberta’s tar sands, one of the most polluting operations on the planet, and a major producer of greenhouse gases. Canada is also one of the highest per capita consumers of oil. We must sharply limit our consumption while demanding higher standards of efficiency, more public transportation, and greater investment in alternative, renewable sources of energy.

If these options seem fantastic, we need only look at the alternative.