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Like a good little skeptic I was concerned when I read on BBC that the “majority of oil has been dealt with“. “What do you mean, dealt with!?” I thought to myself. The report went on to explain that only a quarter of the 4.9 million barrels of oil that had been spewed into the ocean has been left behind for us, humans, to deal with.
Speaking on the ABC television network, White House energy adviser Ms Browner said: “The scientists are telling us about 25% was not captured or evaporated or taken care of by mother nature.”
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“Mother nature will continue to break it down. But some of it may come on shore, as weathered tar balls. And those will be cleaned up. They can be cleaned up. And we will make sure they are cleaned up,” Ms Browner said.
Now, I’m willing to admit that I’m a bit of a hippy; I’m in environmental studies, I like the sound of a didgeridoo and I will never have my license, purely out of principle… but doesn’t it piss off other non-hippies when people talk about “mother earth” as if “she” is something that is going to solve all of our gigantic screw ups? The Earth is supposed to be seen as some self-regulating system that will just “fix” itself no matter how badly we treat it?
Alright, I’ll give this idea a little bit of lee-way, but not much because it isn’t going to self-regulate fast enough to put up with what we do to it (or her…whatever). As secularists/humanists/atheists we should care about the environment a lot anyway, because we know this life is all there is and we need to treat it (life and giver of said life) with respect to make it (life and giver of said life) last as long as possible.
Treehugger has done a story questioning this information, a little bit.
And as John Laumer has reported, there’s still a pretty serious health risk presented by all of the oil that has evaporated into the air — air that is of course routinely breathed by residents around the Gulf Coast.
So I’ll make a point that I’ve gotten used to making in the course of the BP Gulf spill coverage: Whether or not the US government says that the remaining oil only poses a ‘slight risk’ or not, as the NY Times reports, it’s better to remain skeptical of their reports until independent studies are done, and we realize the full extent of the damage.
Unfortunately, if there is one thing I’ve learned from Chris Mooney it’s that once there is a headline on some major media outlet, it is hard to take it back and correct people’s opinions on the matter.
I’m not saying that the BBC is wrong in saying that a lot of the oil has been “dealt with”, if by “dealt with” they mean “humans can’t really do anything about that 75% of oil at this point so lets just forget about it and say that mother earth did us a favour”… But what BBC *has* done is that they have made it seem like the oil spill is less of a big deal because the oil has, by natural causes, become “less of a problem” than if 4.9 million barrels were just sitting there waiting for us to scoop them up. And they did this before, as treehugger mentions, “we realize the full extent of the damage”.
I can hear it now. I’ll be talking with some oil-driven asshole about the oil spill and he’ll say “well, you know 3/4 of that oil was dealt with by natural processes, so I don’t know what you’re so upset”. Then no matter how hard I try to tell them that they’re stupid, I’m just going to get called a crazy/dirty hippy. Thanks BBC, et al.!