Five thousand barrels of oil are pouring into the Gulf of Mexico from a major oil leak more than 5,000 feet below the surface of the ocean, per day. The potential environmental devastation likely to be caused by this oil spill is being called “unprecedented”. All over the news officials are making statements and pledges to assure the public that everything possible is being done in response to the accident. Over a thousand personnel and a hundred ships are battling the spill, as well as a small airforce of planes and helicopters being used to monitor the slick and dump tens of thousands of gallons of chemical dispersant on the spill. But despite all the efforts being made to contain and stop the leak, it is pretty obvious that a quick fix and a total clean up is impossible. No matter how much money, equipment, technology and effort is thrown at this problem, it is almost guaranteed to end in catastrophic damage to the environment.
This isn’t the first time that ecosystems in the Gulf of Mexico have been threatened by toxic substances from human activity. Excessive nutrient runoff in rivers such as the Mississippi and the Atchafalaya, has created unnaturally high nitrate levels in the river deltas and large areas of the northern Gulf of Mexico. This condition of “Hypoxia”, or low oxygen, has created a “Dead Zone” that can no longer support living aquatic organisms. Now, there is still some debate around the specific causes and sources of all the excessive nitrogen creating the dead zone, but it seems pretty obvious that it’s another man made problem. It’s also pretty difficult to deny that a leading contributor of excessive nutrient runoff is chemical based fertilizer that washes into various river systems from farmers’ fields. However, the cause and effect of this environmental catastrophe isn’t as easy to pin point as the obvious leak from the BP oil well that currently threatens the Gulf of Mexico. When a disaster of this magnitude happens suddenly and has a single cause that can be blamed, it’s easy to point our fingers at the culprit and demand an immediate response and some lasting consequences. It’s easy to demand and expect some real change. But when it comes to the complicated issue of polluting our waterways, where fertilizer runoff is only one part of the problem, it’s a lot harder to measure the effects and also a lot harder to convince an industry to make changes.
One can only hope that events like this will cause our industrial world to stop and rethink the way we are doing things, and realize the true price that is paid by the environment as a consequence of our insatiable desire for cheap energy and cheap food, and excessive consumption of natural resources. Hopefully, we will start to find more environmentally responsible ways of producing food and energy, without the need for a disaster to motivate us.
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