Hello everyone! I am back this week with another civic issue blog regarding the environment. Last week, I discussed deforestation, which is a huge issue in the environment. One way, however, that YOU can do to help stop deforestation from wildfires is by avoiding smoking in the woods! Many forest fires start from people being lazy about smoking. This week, I will discuss the civic environmental issue of oil spill pollution.

First of all, what exactly are oil spills? Oils spills are a type of pollution that occurs when oil products that are refined or crude are discharged into water or on land. In this blog post, I will be focusing on the issue of oil spills into water. When oils spills occur, large volumes of oil can leak into the ocean and create a shiny substance on the surface that does not mix with water due to the respective polarities of the two substances.

Oil spills have occurred repeatedly throughout the history of the world and continue to happen today. One of the first oil spill to have happened, occurred in 1910 and lasted over a year and a half into 1911. 1,200 thousand tons of crude oil spilled into the Pacific Ocean. One of the most recent and most infamous of oil spills in human history was the BP oil spill at Deepwater Horizon. On April 20^th, 2010, in the Gulf of Mexico near the Mississippi River Delta in the United States, the 10-year-old drilling rigged suffered a wellhead blowout, which left 11 people killed and 17 injured. The harms didn’t stop there, though. Continuously until September 19^th, 2010, the rig leaked 4.9 million barrels of oil, polluting the water and wasting tons of energy that could have been used in vehicles.

Here are some fast facts about oil spills:

1. Iraqis intentionally released over 300 million gallons of oil into the Persian Gulf as an “attack” for the Gulf War.
2. Over 25% of the entire Louisiana coastline suffers from oil pollution.
3. Vegas has given odds to determine which species will go extinct first as a result of the BP oil spill.
4. The Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989 spilled over 40,000 tons of crude oil in Alaska.
5. One gallon of used oil can pollute 1 million gallons of water.

 

Clearly, a lot of oil has been spilled over the course of the past 100 years into oceans and bodies of water; yet, what are the implications of extreme water pollution? First and foremost, animals are affected the most by water pollution by oil spills. During the BP oil spill at Deepwater Horizon, 82,000 birds across 102 different species were harmed by this spill. Some of these species include but are not limited to: clapper rails, laughing gulls, and northern gannets. In addition, it is estimated that about 6,000 sea turtles have been harmed by this oil spill and all 5 sea turtle species are now listed as endangered or threatened species as a result of this oil spill. Marine mammals have been negatively affected as well by the oil spill, an estimated 25,900 of them, from bottlenose dolphins to melon-headed whales, marine life is diminishing because of oil spills such as the BP spill at Deepwater Horizon. The most extreme case of oil spills affecting animals are with fish. The oil spills directly pollute the homes of these fish, resulting in the complete destruction of tens of thousands of square miles of fishing closures. One last type of animal that oil spills threaten are invertebrates. Countless types of food sources such as lobsters, clams, crabs, and oysters are all killed by oil spills such as the BP spill at Deepwater Horizon. Below is a picture of Deepwater Horizon after the explosion:

With all of these species of animals dying from oil spills, many classify oil spills to be one of the most inhumane and daunting occurrences that humans have caused. Not only are these animals killed for no reason at all, not even for food, but they are killed because of laziness of humans from errors, or man-made forces that could have been prevented. These innocent animals are killed, which limits biodiversity and is simply inhumane. I am no animal rights activist; yet, I believe that the right of these innocent creatures must be protected. If they aren’t providing us food or services, then we have no right to allow our laziness to kill these animals.

There is a solution to oil spills, I believe. Although it has been eight years since the last major oil spill occurred, I still believe that there is some work to be done to limit the amount of oil spills that occur. First, there can be regulations that determine how large drilling rigs can be. Instead of having one extremely large drilling rig, it may be safer to have a couple of small drilling rigs instead. Also, there can be more checkpoints on the rigs in order to prevent these events from occurring. Lastly, stupidity must be minimized. The Iraqis should not spill millions of gallons of oil, threatening the lives of these animals, simply as a war tactic.