Oil Spill? What Oil Spill?
Posted April 29, 2010 in Curbing Pollution, Moving Beyond Oil, Solving Global Warming
As oil gushed out of an underwater oil well ruptured by a deadly explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) published an essay on April 26 by AEI scholar Steven Hayward that called the environmental threats from off shore oil "largely obsolete."
And no, that’s not out of context. Here is the full paragraph:
The two main reasons oil and other fossil fuels became environmentally incorrect in the 1970s--air pollution and risk of oil spills--are largely obsolete. Improvements in drilling technology have greatly reduced the risk of the kind of offshore spill that occurred off Santa Barbara in 1969. There hasn't been a major drilling related spill since then, though shipping oil by tanker continues to be risky, as the Exxon Valdez taught us. To fear oil spills from offshore rigs today is analogous to fearing air travel now because of prop plane crashes in the 1950s.
Subtle spill?
You’ve just got to wonder about these ‘scholars’ sometimes. By the 26th, the Deepwater Horizon had already exploded and sank, 11 workers had died, and a mile-deep oil leak began spewing what is now known to be 5,000 barrels a day into the Gulf of Mexico. Given Hayward is publishing on websites – AEI’s, the Pacific Research Institute’s and the Weekly Standard’s – you’d think he might have been able to update his essay (or thinking) a bit.
But Hayward is connected with institutions that spend a lot of time making the case for polluters and against clean energy. I’ve previously blogged that Hayward and another AEI colleague were exposed two years ago for trying to pay IPCC scientists $10,000 to criticize the IPCC findings. Hayward is also a director of the oil-industry-alumni-staffed Institute for Energy Research (IER), a “think-tank” run by former Koch Industries and oil lobbyist Thomas Pyle. IER has of late specialized in bashing clean energy, calling it fueling claims it is a 'dirty lie.’
Now the dirty mess in the Gulf is re-exposing the very real risks of offshore oil drilling. As the oily slick from the sunken Deepwater Horizon grows daily, Gulf coast residents and the rest of the nation are watching, wondering whether the Coast Guard’s desperate last-ditch effort to control the slick by setting it on fire will save the fishing grounds, shores and economy of the Mississippi Delta.
While the images of the burning rig and spreading slick have already been enough to cause Democratic and Republican officials to question whether offshore oil drilling is really such a good idea, they apparently aren’t enough to persuade the dirty-energy advocates at AEI and IER.
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Comments
Glenn Hurowitz — Apr 29 2010 09:51 AM
This AEI guy is just saying the same thing as President Obama. Here's Obama on April 2: "It turns out, by the way, that oil rigs today generally donÂ’'t cause spills. They are technologically very advanced."
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-a-discussion-jobs-and-economy-charlotte-north-carolina
- Follow me on twitter @glennhurowitz
sTACY VESTA — Apr 29 2010 12:09 PM
WHY ARE ALL ENVIRONMENTAL GROUPS--ESPECIALLY THE NRDC MUTE ON THIS DISASTER? WHY ARE THEY NOT TAKING OBAMA TO TASK FOR HIS DECISION TO OPEN OFF-SHORE DRILLING. SEIZE THIS MOMENT!
Tim D — Apr 29 2010 12:30 PM
^^ +1
To speak out and fight precisely this sort thing... the oil lobby and their self serving agenda becoming policy. This is why I support NRDC. And this is why I supported Obama.
Profoundly disappointed.
Peter Altman — Apr 29 2010 02:02 PM
NRDC has been quote vocal on the subject of expanding offshore oil drilling. See http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/tags/showtag.php?tag=offshoredrilling for recent blog posts on this topic.
Peter Altman — Apr 29 2010 05:35 PM
NOTE: Thanks to faithful reader Pat Creighton of the Institute for Energy Research, who called to let me know that his group doesn't call clean energy a "dirty lie." I clarified the post to correct this and to make clear that IER provides the fuel for claims by others that clean energy is a "dirty lie." Corrected text and links appear above. Thanks Pat!
Karl Kaufman — Apr 30 2010 11:06 AM
Yes, Obama made that statement... precisely because of the quantity of propaganda to that effect, and that quoted in the above article, spewing from the likes of AEI and other pro-drilling advocates. (Well, that and Obama's horrific negotiation technique of preemptive concessions.)
Now we have to wait to find out just how damaging these misconceptions were, and how quickly AEI and other free market advocates start clamoring for a government bailout for the offending corporation(s). (Will Beached Petroleum be held accountable for ALL the costs associated with the spill, or will the taxpayers be expected to foot the bill -- continuing the tradition of subsidizing the oil industry and masking the true costs of our addiction to oil?)
Lisa Pelstring — May 1 2010 04:23 PM
I work for NOAA, which is a trustee of coastal resources and, along wih other state and federal agency co-trustees, will be assessing the oil spill impacts to natural resources and the public's lost uses of those resources (recreational fishing, hunting, wildlife viewing, canoeing, etc.).
This multi-year effort is called a Natural Resource Damage Assessment or NRDA, and the goal is to restore resources injured by the spill and lost-uses of those resources. Examples of restoration include restoring wetlands, removing fish passage barriers, improving recreational facilities, creating oyster reefs, improving shellfish habitat, etc.
Pleases visit www.darrp.noaa.gov for more information about natural resource damage assessment.
Below are some additionallinks you and others may find useful about Deepwater and oil spill impacts to wildlife and shorelines:
http://www.incidentnews.gov/incident/8220
http://response.restoration.noaa.gov/orr_search.php?keywords=wildlife
Click on Biological Resources
http://www.tristatebird.org/response/effects
http://www.owcn.org/about-oiled-wildlife/effects-of-oil-on-wildlife
http://alaska.fws.gov/media/unalaska/Oil%20Spill%20Fact%20Sheet.pdf
www.response.restoration.noaa.gov
Click on Deepwater Horizon on the right and then see the links at the bottom of that page
Lisa Pelstring