Mickey Glantz has a new post on the Fragileecologies Blog comparing our societal response to the gulf oil spill and the near total lack of response to a much more serious, long-term threat to the gulf, the ever-growing “dead zone” that spills out from the mouth of the Mississippi. This despite the fact the dead zone has been a known issue for some time:
“Back in 1974, Dr. R. Eugene Turner, Director of Coastal Ecology Institute at Louisiana State University, discovered a “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico. The dead zone is the result of runoff from cities, farmlands, feedlots and factories into the mighty Mississippi River. This River basin drains about 40% of the continental United States. Herbicides, pesticides, fertilizers among other chemicals are released on a routine basis throughout the basin. In the springtime they accumulate of the Gulf Coast forming an 8000+ square mile region, which adversely affects all living marine resources.”
Mickey has an interesting comparison chart for the two problems that begins to point toward why we responded so quickly to an oil spill, while largely ignoring a much larger ecological disaster that compromises the Gulf economy and the health of the population that lives along the lower reaches of the Mississippi and along the Gulf coast.
What do you think of Mickey’s list? Is there anything he’s missed?
Another reason is that we got concerned about eutrophication quite a few decades ago, during the big ‘artificial chemicals’ scare of the 1970s, which is now long out of fashion. Scares can only maintain their grip on the public consciousness for so long before people realise the world isn’t ending after all, get bored and lose interest.
Because oil and energy politics are tied up in currently active scares, emphasising the Gulf disaster and making a show of our response to it are useful for highlighting points of the current political narrative. There’s no such advantage in responding to every case of artificially anoxic waters.
In other circumstances, we might have had a calmer response to the oil spill, too; as we have had to bigger spills in the past.
Yes, disaster fatigue is key here – hopefully Mickey will see your comment, because that is a big factor he’s left out. And I think you make a great point about the mobilization of this disaster within the current political-economic context. If oil was easily found anywhere, or if all oil-producing countries were stable and friendly, this would have a lot less play.
Sadly, your comment is now out of date (to be fair, you made it nearly a week ago) – this spill is now acknowledged to be the largest of its kind ever. Depressing.
Well, I suppose the Lakeview Gusher was of a different kind, and the estimates overlap with the Gulf War spill, so I guess it probably is. I accept the correction.
Not that I find it depressing. If we can get through even such a large spill with so little damage, then that’s actually quite hopeful for the future.
Accurate figures on the natural leakage of oil into the Gulf are hard to come by, but using mid-range estimates the Macondo spill would appear to be about 10 times the background level, or about 10 years worth all at once, put another way. So the question is how adaptable the natural processing of oil is to such a surge. Evidence of high adaptability (and greater efforts on the part of oil companies to try to prevent any repeats, of course) would be good news.
I have heard a rumour that the Whitehouse is already claiming credit.
Let us hope for the best.
I suppose you have a point about optimism – it is true that huge leaks do not seem to have the lasting impacts projected. Which speaks, I think, to a larger issue – our incomplete understanding of the complex systems that are our ecology and environment. This cuts both ways – sometimes it works out a lot better than we hoped, but sometimes we hit those nonlinear moments where things go all wrong and we can’t put humpty dumpty back together again. I guess this is a call to humility all around . . .