Grit for Grist:
Outrage, activists and voting action are a must for climate stability
For those who love the coast, joy is a pristine beach: waves, rocks, shorebirds, and shoving sand and water into tiny utopias with a plastic pail and shovel. What is not joy? Dodging discarded cigarette butts, plastic trash, foreign invasive weeds and globs of oil that stick to your feet and towel.
The same general principles apply wherever we like to hang out, be they mountain trails, city parks or pavement. In the United States, we can thank our current aesthetic for a clean environment on the collective efforts of activists and governments making and enforcing national environmental laws over the past 50 years.
One of the many events that ushered crude environmental skirmishes into a refined mainstream movement was the first oil spill ever televised. Six miles off the coast of Santa Barbara, California, drillers lost control of the new well they were opening on Jan. 28, 1969. A few days later the leaking oil reached Santa Barbara’s pristine beaches as did oil-soaked wildlife of every kind. In all, about 3 million gallons of oil spilled. You can read more about the oil spill here. A year later, Earth Day was created, as was the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Malone Superfund site, a Texas oil pit. (NOAA)
Twenty years went by. On March 24, 1989, the wrecked Exxon Valdez oil tanker released almost 11 million gallons of crude oil and fowled over 1000 miles of sensitive Alaska coastline, wildlife and all. (See splash photo of a sea otter oiled by the Exxon Valdez.) Then twenty years later on April 20, 2010, British Petroleum’s Deepwater Horizon drilling rig caught fire. The resulting spill coated Gulf of Mexico waters, coastal communities and wildlife from Florida to Texas with 210 million gallons of oil. And these are just the United States’ major disasters.
Skimming diesel oil slicks (NOAA)
Each of these spills and the ensuing public outrage brought about positive change, but oil’s lifecycle from drilling, extraction, refinement to combustion products remains a dirty business. Lurking as a backdrop to all these disasters is the ongoing climate crisis fossil fuel use created. Perhaps the biggest lesson we are all learning is that the real cost of a fossil fuel economy has yet to be accurately calculated or realized.
This year, Earth Day celebrations were held digitally. We were all “sheltering in place” from a viral pandemic. The Covid 19 virus flourished thanks to the ease and unrealistic prices individuals pay to travel the globe, as described here. This pandemic is a byproduct of our fossil fuel lifestyle and underscores the complex intersection between environmental issues and the climate crisis.
Photo by Evgeni Tcherkasski on Unsplash
Oddly enough, another byproduct of the current pandemic is the current respite from excess pollution and the significant cut in greenhouse gas emissions. You can read more about that here. Madison streets are quiet, making walking, playing and cycling so much more appealing (except for intervals of speeding drivers which is sad). Somewhere there is a healthy middle ground. Unlike the oil industry’s renowned boom-bust cycles, good governance means protecting us from the instability that comes from careening cycles of elation to disaster to elation to disaster. Speak out to grease government wheels into action. Climate instability is fueling our instability.
Splash photo credit: Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council
Be Climate Aware
Climate change in Wisconsin means more extreme rain events. Both Madison and Middleton have spent much of the last two years studying ways to cope with all that water. Both city governments have ordinances in front of them to address flooding. Follow the progress and contact your city alders to urge adoption of these new ordinances. (See the Action Alert in the May 4, 2020 E-news for Madison suggestions on actions you can take.)
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This blog is written by LWVDC’s Climate Team. If you receive blog posts by email, our system automatically inserts “by Brook Soltvedt.” Brook is the webmaster, not the author of the blog.