9 Things You Didn t Know About the Gulf Oil Disaster That Could Save Millions of Lives

8/3/2019 9 Things You Didn t Know About the Gulf Oil Disaster That Could Save Millions of Lives

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9 Things You Didnt Know About The Gulf OilDisaster That Could Save Millions of Lives

Jed Diamond, Ph.D. has been a health-care professional for the last45 years. He is the author of 9 books, including Looking for Love in

All the Wrong Places, Male Menopause, The Irritable MaleSyndrome, and Mr. Mean: Saving Your Relationship from theIrritable Male Syndrome. He offers counseling to men, women, andcouples in his office in California or by phone with people throughoutthe U.S. and around the world. To receive a Free E-book on MensHealth and a free subscription to Jeds e-newsletter go to

www.MenAlive.com.

This is what the end of the oil age looks like, says

Post-Carbon Institute fellow Richard Heinberg.

The cheap, easy petroleum is gone; from now on,

we will pay steadily more and more for what we put

in our gas tanksmore not just in dollars, but in

lives and health, in a failed foreign policy that

spawns foreign wars and military occupations, andin the lost integrity of the biological systems that

sustain life on this planet.

The only solution is to do proactively, and sooner,

what we will end up doing anyway as a result of

resource depletion and economic, environmental,

and military ruin: end our dependence on the stuff.

Everybody knows we must do this. Even a recent

American president (an oil man, it should be noted)

admitted that America is addicted to oil. Will we

let this addiction destroy us, or will we overcome it?
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Good intentions are not enough. Now is the moment

for the President, other elected officials at all levels

of government, and ordinary citizens to make this

our central priority as a nation. We have hardchoices to make, and an enormous amount of work

to do.

9 Global Experts Steer the Gulf Oil Spill Conversation

into Fresh Waters

From Post Carbon Institute Website:

Posted May 20, 2010 by David FridleyDavid HughesErika AllenGloria FloraStephanie MillsTom WhippleWarren KarlenzigWilliam RyersonZenobia Barlow

In an effort to broaden theconversation about the horrificGulf Coast oil spill, nine Fellowsof the Post Carbon Institute offer

their perspectives on largelyunderreported aspects andoutcomes of the disaster.

ERIKA ALLEN(Food/Agriculture & SocialJustice Fellow)The True Costs of Production& Environmental Racism

As corporate entities continue to extract natural resources from theearth, whether on sea or land, there needs to be a shift in calculatingthe true costs of "production". Risk management assessment needsto also include: costs associated with climate degradation both in
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terms of increasing fossil fuel and mineral use and, of particularinterest in this latest disaster, the high costs of environmental racism.A colleague of mine, working in New Orleans (Nat Turner of theBlair St. Grocery Project), in a discussion about the oil spill andimpacts on the ecosystem pointed out that this is poised to be a LaNina year with increased risk for powerhouse hurricanes that will suckup the oil and dump it all over an already devastated New Orleansand the Gulf Coast region. These hurricanes dont need to makelandfall, they just need to send oil-laden water to shore. This loomingdisaster, this transference of the millions of gallons of oil to shore, issomething no one is calculating.We must demand corporate reparations and a full re-hauling of

inspections and development of environmentally sound riskmanagement and disaster preparedness plans for offshore oil drillingin our fragile seas.Erika Allen is Chicago Projects Manager forGrowing Power, anationally acclaimed non-profit organization and land trust led byfounder Will Allen that provides equal access to healthy, high-quality,safe, and affordable food, especially in disadvantaged communities.She helps food producers of limited resources strengthen their farmbusinesses and work in partnerships to create healthy and diversefood options in inner city and rural communities. Erika is co-chair ofthe Chicago Food Policy Advisory Council, and was appointed byGovernor Pat Quinn in 2008 to the Illinois Local and Organic Foodand Farm Task Force.

TOM WHIPPLE (Peak Oil Fellow)Deepwater Denial: Not Much Left to Drill"Yet another serious problem for the prospects of future oil production

is starting to emerge. The deepwater wells, on which we arebasing much of our energy future, may not be as productive aspreviously thought. Until recently the poster child for deepwater oilproduction was BP's Thunderhorse platform that, after years of delay,started producing in 2008 and was supposed to produce a billionbarrels of oil at the rate of 250,000 barrels a day (b/d). At first allseemingly went well with production reaching 172,000 b/d in January
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of 2009, but then production started falling rapidly to a low of 61,000b/d last December. BP refuses to comment publicly on what ishappening at Thunderhorse, but outside observers are growingincreasingly skeptical that the platform will ever produce the plannedbillion barrels. At least 25 other deepwater projects are said to befacing problems of falling production, raising the question of just howmuch oil these very expensive deepwater projects will ever produce."Tom Whipple is one of the most highly respected analysts of peak oilissues in the United States. A retired 30-year CIA analyst who hasbeen following the peak oil story since 1999, Tom is the editor of thedaily Peak Oil News and the weekly Peak Oil Review, both publishedby theAssociation for the Study of Peak Oil-USA. He is also a weeklycolumnist on peak oil issues for the Falls Church News Press. Tom

has degrees from Rice University and the London School ofEconomics.BILL RYERSON (Population Fellow)We Drill to Satisfy Demand: The Real Cleanup Starts with FamilyPlanningPresident Obama is expected to sign an executive order to form aPresidential commission to investigate the Gulf oil spill. We maynever know who is directly liable, but we know with absolute certaintywho bears the ultimate responsibility: it is us. We are drilling inhazard-prone areas because of humanitys insatiable appetite for oil.And thats just one of a myriad ways in which human activity isendangering wildlife.Last week, the Convention on Biological Diversity released its thirdGlobal Biodiversity Outlook report, and noted that the population ofwild vertebrate species fell by an average of nearly one- third (31%)globally between 1970 and 2006, with the decline especially severe in

the tropics (59%) and in freshwater ecosystems (41%). It reportedthat, The news is not good. We continue to lose biodiversity at a ratenever before seen in history, and it warned that "massive further lossis increasingly likely.The CBD lists two indirect drivers behind the loss of wildlife:population growth and rising consumption. If worlds leaders continueto focus on boosting consumption and we dont do a lot more to
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prevent unwanted pregnancies in the world, the outlook for the Gulfarea and the world is grim.William Ryerson is founder and President ofPopulation MediaCenter, and President of the Population Institute. He has a 38-yearhistory of working in the field of reproductive health, including twodecades of experience adapting the Sabido methodology forbehavior change communications to various cultural settingsworldwide. In 2006, he was awarded the Nafis Sadik Prize forCourage from the Rotarian Action Group on Population andDevelopment. William received a B.A. in Biology (Magna CumLaude) from Amherst College and an M.Phil. in Biology from YaleUniversity.

STEPHANIE MILLS (Ecology Fellow)Screw Nature. We Want Wal-Mart!

The map of the area threatened by the BP blowout, comprisingnearly half of the USs coastal wetlands, looks like tattered lace. Its arealm of islands, shoals, estuaries, marshes, swamps, bayous, andcreeks, land speckled across water, water twining across land, all of itin flux. There appears to be an infinity of shoreline, with a nearinfinity of oil to be washed by tides and blown by hurricanes andcarried by ocean currents into those wetlands to be caught in thereeds and sea grasses, to clog the silts and sands and choke thedwellings of the minuscule life forms that constitute the basis of theenormous banquet of life the Gulf of Mexico has immemoriallyprovided.Its crucial habitat for countless species of birds and other animals, tosay nothing of the gumbo of Southern Louisianas cultures. Much ofthe reporting on the blowout has rightly concerned the human

economy of the Gulf, the peril spilt oil poses to place-based industrieslike the fishing and tourism. Yet the damage to natures economy willbe incalculable. No matter how sincerely or mediagenically ourpolitical leadership vows to fix things and hold the perpetrators toaccount, ecological disasters of this magnitude admit of no relief.
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Excepting its magnitude, BPs Deepwater Horizon gusher is analmost routine occurrence. Since 1996, reports Robert Kennedy,there have been 39 blowouts in wells in the Gulf of Mexico prior tothis gargantuan event. An outright ban on offshore oil drilling is theonly sure way to prevent such a thing from ever happening again.Vastly outnumbering the killed and injured workers, whose loss aloneis infinitely grievous, the majority of the victims of this dependencythe wildlife, the landscapes, and the future generations of humanbeingsare voiceless. Bereft of clout, their claims are faint ascompared to the din of PR, the white noise of the status quo, and ourgeneral human aversion to sacrifice and inability to defergratification.Stephanie Mills is a renownedauthorand lecturer on bioregionalism,

ecological restoration, community economics, and voluntarysimplicity. Stephanie has lectured at numerous institutions, includingthe E.F. Schumacher Society, the Chicago Academy of Sciences,and the Harvard Graduate School of Design. In 1996 she was namedby Utne Reader as one of the world's leading visionaries.

WARREN KARLENZIG (Urban Sustainabiity Fellow)American Drivers Need to Shoulder Gulf Coast Burden"We arent looking at the real cause, which is not just demand, butdemand created by inherently inefficient suburban planning. Themajority of Gulf oil is being used to power cars and trucks servingsuburban U.S. homes and business. We need to plan a way toreduce suburban/ exurban impact on the nation's oil use. Gulfcommunities, and other communities worldwide (Niger River Delta)are shouldering the burdens of American drivers. Suburbancitizens nationwide should start a campaign to drive less and donatethe resulting savings to Gulf fishing industry, as its their fossil

fuel - heavy lifestyle that has made this type of tragedy inevitable.Its also of interest to note that solar cells or wind power havenothing to do with this issue in terms of current solutions. Oil is notused to power electricity or heating anymore in the US (only 2%,versus 67% for transportation)
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We need to rethink our community planning if we want to reduce ouroil dependency , climate impacts and economic viability. Economicsare already dictating that car-dependent sprawledcommunities cannot compete with market demands for denser, mixeduse, transit-oriented communities. Higher oil prices, climate changeand oil-related megadisasters like the Gulf oil spill will make exurbansprawl obsolete by the end of the decade.Warren Karlenzig is president ofCommon Current, an internationallyactive urban sustainability strategy consultancy. He is author ofHowGreen is Your City? The SustainLane US City Rankings. Warren ison the board of directors for the Climate Change Center and theKorea Green Foundation, and has lectured in three continents,appearing in global media including The Washington Post, The Wall

Street Journal, The New York Times, People's Daily (China), BBC,CNN and CNBC.

DAVID HUGHES (Fossil Fuels Fellows)Approaching the End of Oil: The Last FrontierThe BP Deepwater Horizon was the latest but certainly not the lastmajor oil spill. Although it was pushing the limits of water depth andsub-seafloor depthat 5,000 and 13,000 feet respectivelyit was farfrom the record book, as wells have been drilled in more than 9,000feet of water reaching more than 25,000 feet deep. Mother Nature isunknowable to the last detail in such physical conditions, andtherefore it is impossible to eliminate risk completely. Why are wedoing this? Because this is the very last frontier for oil extraction.The cost of Deepwater Horizon in both ecological and monetaryterms will be phenomenal. Yet it is unlikely to significantly impact therace for offshore oil to fuel the addiction of our growth-based society,

which now consumes more than 30 billion barrels per year(equivalent to the daily output of 17,000 Deepwater Horizon wells,which is a very productive well as oil wells go). Ultimately, this racewill lead to ever-diminishing returns, owing to declining energy returnon investment and escalating ecological and monetary costs.
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David Hughes is a geoscientist who has studied the energyresources of Canada for nearly four decades, including 32 years withthe Geological Survey of Canada as a scientist and researchmanager. He developed the National Coal Inventory to determine theavailability and environmental constraints associated with Canadascoal resources. As Team Leader for Unconventional Gas on theCanadian Gas Potential Committee, he coordinated the recent

publication of a comprehensive assessment of Canadasunconventional natural gas potential. He is currently president of aconsultancy dedicated to research on energy and sustainabilityissues.

GLORIA FLORA (Public Lands Fellow)

The Butterfly Effect: Tiny Ripples Make Huge, Dirty WavesWere largely overlooking the absolute interconnectedness of theeffects of the tragedystretching into all aspects of life as we know itin that region. Humans (emotional, psychological, economics, food),Physical (air, beaches, contamination of the whole water column, lossof barrier islands) and Biological (plants, microbes, aquatic life, birds,mammals). The tragedy in the Gulf parallels other currentecosystlem collapses (polar ice sheets, glacier-dependent systems,island inundation from sea level rise) and even our global economicsystem, 80% of which is dependent on natural resources. Its allconnected but we continue to turn a blind eye.Gloria Flora is founder and Director ofSustainable ObtainableSolutions, an organization dedicated to the sustainability of publiclands and of the plants, animals and communities that depend onthem. In her 22-year career with the U.S. Forest Service, Gloriabecame nationally known for her leadership in ecosystemmanagement and for her courageous principled stands: as supervisor

of the Lewis and Clark National Forest in north-central Montana, shemade a landmark decision to prohibit natural gas leasing along the356,000-acre Rocky Mountain Front. She serves on the MontanaClimate Change Advisory Committee and works throughout the U.S.with the Center for Climate Strategies in assisting states developclimate change action plans.
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DAVID FRIDLEY (Renewable Energy & Biofuels Fellow)Hook or Crook: California Will Reduce Oil ConsumptionIs offshore drilling environmentally responsible? This is amultifaceted problem. California produces about 1/3rd of its crudeconsumption today, with the balance coming from Alaska andoverseas (with Saudi Arabia, Ecuador, and Iraq being the largestforeign suppliers). This means that there are large oil tankers arriving

in California almost daily, and these tankers can pose as much of athreat of an environmental disaster as a spill from an offshore oil well.But California and Alaskan production peaked some time ago(California peaked in 1985), so we face a future of even higher levelsof tanker traffic (the California Energy Commission forecasts 100-250additional tanker visits annually by 2030, depending on the size of theship, and up to 175 additional visits by 2020) as domestic productioncontinues to fall. But even with additional offshore drilling here, itwould not make up for continued decline in California and Alaskaproduction, so imports would need to continue in any case, though itwould serve to reduce tanker traffic.What this suggests is that the only truly environmentally responsibleway for California to minimize the threat of future damage from oilspills is to cut consumption of oil, and this state is woefullyunprepared to deal with this third option, although it will come about,either through intention or as a consequence of declining globalproduction.

Since 1995, David Fridley has been a staff scientist at the EnergyAnalysis Program at the Lawrence Berkeley National LaboratoryinCalifornia. He is also deputy group leader of Lawrence Berkeley'sChina Energy Group, which collaborates with China on end-userenergy efficiency, government energy management programs, andenergy policy research. Mr. Fridley has nearly 30 years of experience
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working and living in China in the energy sector, and is a fluentMandarin speaker. He spent 12 years working in the petroleumindustry both as a consultant on downstream oil markets in the Asia-Pacific region and as business development manager for CaltexChina. He has written and spoken extensively on the energy andecological limits of biofuels.

ZENOBIA BARLOW (Ecological Literacy Fellow)Education System Will Benefit from Natures CourseAboard a boat in the Gulf of Mexico this week, Vernon Asper, aprofessor of marine sciences at the University of Southern

Mississippi, told NPR: The very best thing probably is to let naturetake its course.He was not, of course, alone in his response (in this case, referringto the deep-water microbes that decompose oil.) In the face of thedaunting Gulf of Mexico oil spillstill spilling, one month after theexplosionit is tempting to resort, on rational or spiritual grounds, tothoughts about the healing powers of nature. We poor humans, afterall, dont yet even know how much oil has spilled, or how to stop it.

But how might things have turned out differently if more of us hadunderstood the course of natureand acted on that understandingbefore this crisis hit? Would we have better estimated naturescapacity to compensate for human mistakes and limited ourselves toactions and technologies whose consequences we could manage?Would we have learned to calculate and live within an energy budgetthat doesnt require dangerous extraction practices?If there is any good at all to come of the latest Gulf disaster, it is that

more people might recognize the very real need for schools to acceptresponsibility for nurturing a new kind of understanding and caring,which has been variously called ecoliteracy, ecological intelligence,and education for sustainable living.We urgently need schools to prepare young people for a worldmarked by climate change, water shortages, and significant threats to
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food securityand then share the teaching and learning experiencesthat inspire them to develop more creative, sustainable ways of living.Education for sustainable living recognizes that the skills andwisdom that were once sufficient for our survival as a species are nolonger adequate for modern life. It reveals the hidden web ofconnections between human activities and natures systems and ourimpact on the planet, health, and social systems. And it points youngpeople in the direction of better, more sustainable ways of living.Surely, its a better than hoping that nature will bail us out of ourmesses.Zenobia Barlow is cofounder and executive director of the Center for

Ecoliteracy and a Post Carbon Institute fellow. More atwww.ecoliteracy.org

Photo credit:Paul Mirocha
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9 Things You Didn t Know About the Gulf Oil Disaster That Could Save Millions of Lives