Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Tanker spills 11 million gallons of oil

Twenty years ago, the Exxon Valdez crashed and spilled lots of oil, and the world was forever changed.

The ecosystems remain affected, although the biggest effects are over. The world was outraged and demanded action--what did we get?

Are we safer from oil pollution than 20 years ago?

Most people don't know that routine ship operations leak more oil into our oceans than spills. And we're making little progress in solving that problem.

4 comments:

Horizon Charters Guadalupe Cage Diving said...

great post, i saw this an clicked on it muttering under by breath "jesus christ not again". i had no idea this was the case.thanks for the insight the sooner we get algae based bio fuels the better.

consider this, the worlds oil is killing the planet with chemicals derived from oil and oils "enabling" of the engines of war and massive population growth.

the oil itself created from animals that went extinct millions of years ago now leading to our extinction or serious population decline.

irony?

perhaps on a geologic time frame oil is the "great balancer".

Derik said...

This wouldn't happen if we weren't so dependent on fossil fuels. Simply one more reason to search for cleaner energy sources.

Mister Kurtz said...

US owned operators have made enormous progress in reducing spills in the past 20 years. Billions of dollars have been invested in new double hulled tonnage. *Every* spill, even a gallon spilled on the deck while re-fueling a portable pump, must be reported to the Coast Guard.
Yes, this was a result of OPA-90 legislation, not industry altruism, but please try to give a little credit where credit is due.

Mister Kurtz said...

One further thought: it certainly wold be nice if we could save oil for manufacturing, and not have to burn such a valuable product. Ocean and air transportation are two things that will have to remain heavily dependent on oil for power, until we invent something entirely new. I guess we could go back to coal fired steamers, but I can;t quite see a plane that works that way...