> While researchers stopped short of concluding that the oil spill had caused the declines
Why though? Why are we so afraid of accountability? Because this is what people point to when trying to deny things are true: ThErE iS NO EviDeNce, sHoW Me THe StUdY, etc. etc.
It’s truly exhausting to know the damage we’ve done to the ecosystem and how many bad actors only concerned with profit are out there preventing it from happening again.
No, they are definitely terrified about it happening again. Deepwater Horizon cost BP nearly $70 billion total in direct financial payouts, including $20 billion in fines. $140 billion if you include total financial cost to BP. This is an enormous amount of money, even for a large corporation such as BP. BP suspended their dividend because of the spill.
That's a massive amount of money that could have went to paying shareholders, and that's why they don't want it happening again.
The most galling/depressing thing to me is that our population is so overwhelming that if even just 1% of us are bad actors, that's still so many that catastrophes like this (environmental and otherwise) become mathematically inevitable.
Interesting that the spill hasn't dampened long term prospects for offshore drilling (besides the brief push against it around 2016) whereas Chernobyl basically nerfed American nuclear power gen.
One of those things damaged a remote habitat where people aren't to be found, while the other could have potentially caused significant human suffering because of its proximity to people. Setting aside the facts around the safety of nuclear power, it's easy to see how people can fear one over the other - oil spills don't result in mass deaths to people, while theoretically, Chernobyl could've.
And the companies are also struggling to recover, right? Because the damage to the company is commensurate with the damage to the environment it works within?
No? The companies are largely free from consequence?
Those aren’t mutually exclusive - time and money were spent to dump tons of dispersants in an effort to actually clean it up.
This comes after the Exxon Valdez spill where it was learned that hot water and high pressure hoses to clean areas did more damage than good - the untouched beaches recovered faster via natural breakdown than the beaches that were cleaned. In deepwater, they skipped the scrubbing and cleaning and emphasized dispersants (y’know, solution to pollution being dilution) and it probably hurt the ecosystem more than letting natural enzymes and such take care of it. The bottom line is that every major oil spill clean up effort is an experiment. But sometimes the instinct to “do something” causes more harm than good. Would the public tolerate an “all natural” approach or a light touch of beach cleaning? Probably not, even though there’s good reason to think the ecosystem (exclusive of human needs) may be better served by that.
> While researchers stopped short of concluding that the oil spill had caused the declines
Why though? Why are we so afraid of accountability? Because this is what people point to when trying to deny things are true: ThErE iS NO EviDeNce, sHoW Me THe StUdY, etc. etc.
It’s truly exhausting to know the damage we’ve done to the ecosystem and how many bad actors only concerned with profit are out there preventing it from happening again.
No, they are definitely terrified about it happening again. Deepwater Horizon cost BP nearly $70 billion total in direct financial payouts, including $20 billion in fines. $140 billion if you include total financial cost to BP. This is an enormous amount of money, even for a large corporation such as BP. BP suspended their dividend because of the spill.
That's a massive amount of money that could have went to paying shareholders, and that's why they don't want it happening again.
The most galling/depressing thing to me is that our population is so overwhelming that if even just 1% of us are bad actors, that's still so many that catastrophes like this (environmental and otherwise) become mathematically inevitable.
Interesting that the spill hasn't dampened long term prospects for offshore drilling (besides the brief push against it around 2016) whereas Chernobyl basically nerfed American nuclear power gen.
It's quite simple, really...
One of those things damaged a remote habitat where people aren't to be found, while the other could have potentially caused significant human suffering because of its proximity to people. Setting aside the facts around the safety of nuclear power, it's easy to see how people can fear one over the other - oil spills don't result in mass deaths to people, while theoretically, Chernobyl could've.
And the companies are also struggling to recover, right? Because the damage to the company is commensurate with the damage to the environment it works within?
No? The companies are largely free from consequence?
Maybe our system is a bit broken.
What a crappy article. It talks about the 60% decline right after the spill but doesn’t quantify the recovery or lack thereof.
Didn't they dump tons and tons of chemicals to break up the oil spill, rather than spending the time and money to actually clean it up?
Not antagonizing but curious: how else would you do it?
Those aren’t mutually exclusive - time and money were spent to dump tons of dispersants in an effort to actually clean it up. This comes after the Exxon Valdez spill where it was learned that hot water and high pressure hoses to clean areas did more damage than good - the untouched beaches recovered faster via natural breakdown than the beaches that were cleaned. In deepwater, they skipped the scrubbing and cleaning and emphasized dispersants (y’know, solution to pollution being dilution) and it probably hurt the ecosystem more than letting natural enzymes and such take care of it. The bottom line is that every major oil spill clean up effort is an experiment. But sometimes the instinct to “do something” causes more harm than good. Would the public tolerate an “all natural” approach or a light touch of beach cleaning? Probably not, even though there’s good reason to think the ecosystem (exclusive of human needs) may be better served by that.