The Environment

Oil is virtually associated with all spheres of modern society, including domestic and commercial heating as well as the transportation. At the same time, mostly negative impact on the environment that oil has, makes its production rather dangerous. It has been proved by lots of quality essays that oil is very toxic to almost all forms of life. Additionally, oil industry might cause changes in climate. However, regardless of all possible negative consequences, the mankind continues oil production. On April 15, 2010, an explosion damaged an oil platform Deepwater Horizon that was located forty miles from the Mississippi Delta. The platform was under the control of British Petroleum. Deepwater Horizon burned a day and a half and all attempts to extinguish the fire failed. Nobody knew the exact quantity of oil that was pouring forth into the Gulf of Mexico. Final figures were in the range between 50,000 and 60,000 barrels a day. In two weeks, the oil spill covered 3,850 square miles. Besides, there were reports of casualties. Eleven workers were presumed dead, while most of the platform workers escaped in lifeboats.

We can hardly imagine the environmental damage that was caused by this disaster. Gulf Coast communities were terrified by an enormous damage that covered the Delta National Wildlife Refuge, Breton National Wildlife Refuge, the beaches of Gulf Islands National Seashore, along 125 miles of Louisiana beaches, Alabama and Florida. The location of the platform prevented the successful stop of gushing. The gushing wellhead was not contained until July 15, 2010, when it was capped. For three months, mass media daily featured social and environmental chaos. In the result of the catastrophe, approximately 4.4 million barrels of oil were released into the Gulf. This spill is considered to be the worst environmental disaster in the history of the U.S. petroleum industry.

The consequences of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill cover all areas of life. It should be mentioned that many of the affected beaches are densely populated and heavily used year-round by both local residents and tourists from throughout the world. Thus, the spill caused extensive economic damage to the Gulf’s tourism industry and fishing, not mentioning wildlife and marine habitats. Hundreds of various ships and more than seven thousand people participated in the cleanup of the waters. Another negative consequence of the split was a six-month moratorium on offshore drilling with loss of jobs for the employees. British Petroleum had to take the responsibility for the disaster and was accountable for all cleanup costs and other damage. President Barak Obama got a commitment from British Petroleum executives to create a $20 billion response fund to cover natural resource damages, state and local response costs, and personal losses, with the further stipulation that damages might be far higher.

In terms of the threat to the wildlife, more than four hundred species of marine habitats were judged at risk, including the Leatherback Turtle, the Loggerhead Turtle, the Hawksbill Turtle, the Green Turtle, and the endangered Kemp’s Ridley turtle. Birds affected included roseate spoonbills, pelicans, gulls, blue herons, egrets and terns. The area of the oil spill covered more than eight thousand species, including over twelve hundred fish, fifteen hundred crustaceans, fourteen hundred mollusks, two hundred birds, the four sea turtles, and twenty-nine marine mammals. Volunteers collected about seven thousand dead animals. Nearly 36 % of Gulf of Mexico, which is eighty seven thousand square miles, was closed to fishing.

American society realized that modern life is impossible without oil production. At the same time, they were terrified with the environmental damage caused by the disaster. Eventually, they claimed that the environmental conservation must have been high on the national agenda. Unfortunately, a year after the tragedy, Americans seemed to forget all their fears and promises. Petroleum companies were still drilling for oil and the society demanded it as much as before. There were so many people to blame for the environmental disaster like the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Americans blamed executives of the oil production companies, government regulators, technologically arrogant personnel and greedy for money businessmen. They never blamed themselves, who had both demanded and permitted the drilling.

Among other environmental threats, global climate change deserves special attention. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2007 reported that the Earth was warming and the warming was caused by greenhouse gas emissions and deforestation. At the Copenhagen Climate Summit in 2009, 123 reports were devoted to domestic policies to address climate change. However, climate change remains to be of unprecedented importance on the world agenda. In Europe, the global warming is considered to be the second most serious problem facing the world while the first one is poverty or current economic downturn. It has been scientifically proved that Earth was warming. At the same time, little is done in terms of preventing or ending the process. It should be stressed that the global heat is firstly the issue of climate, and after that the issue of economics, politics and morality.

To conclude, the environment suffers a lot from the humans’ activity. Mankind uses all possible and available resources of the planet leaving ‘tons of garbage’ left. Unfortunately, our negligence causes enormous harm to wildlife, mankind and the planet in general. Everything is polluted and obtains signs of a human being. Sometimes, I think that people do not love their planet and all the goods it provides. Otherwise, how can we explain the vandalistic manner of humans’ existence? We should start loving our planet as soon as possible if we do not want to live in a skip.