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We are both literally and metaphorically soaked in oil
Amazon oil well, Ecuador; photo by a_isacson (source: Flickr Creative Commons)
It was only a matter of time before oil started raining down from the sky. It’s just ironic that it’s happening after we’ve past peak oil. It’s as if God is saying, ‘you want it that bad? Here, have some!’ I’m just waiting for someone to call it a renewable natural resource – after all, it’s plant-based and falling from the sky. Geo-engineering has unintentionally made this possible.
In all seriousness, the whole ‘it’s raining oil in Louisiana’ scare comes from a shaky YouTube video in which it appears to be raining oil on a Louisiana street, but it could be just a really messy, oily neighborhood that got rained on.
There has been speculation that the chemical dispersant Corexit 9500 used by BP could mix with oil, evaporate and then come down as rain. According to an article in the Christian Science Monitor, the EPA has stated that this is extremely unlikely. The EPA has also ordered BP to stop using the dispersant because of its toxicity.
Yet…
The auto blog Jalopnik dug up a 2003 study that shows that oil on the open ocean could evaporate under the right conditions. And it’s unclear how the Corexit 9500 dispersant affects evaporation.
– Christian Science Monitor
Besides accidents like the Gulf disaster, oil has a way of oozing into everything from cosmetics to cars to the billions of plastic products we use. A lot of toxic ‘spills’ aren’t even really accidents, but rather dumping and polluting due to irresponsible industry practices. The oil industry has a history of doing whatever it is allowed to do – or can get away with – regardless of environmental and human costs.
Johann Hari writes in the Independent:
To pluck one random example, in Ecuador the petrol companies have to pump water into the Amazonian oil fields in order to extract it. This leaves behind a toxic soup of mercury, benzene and chromium 6. For decades, it was simply pumped into the local rivers – causing an epidemic of cancers and severely deformed babies. A US court calculated that the unpaid liabilities for destroying so many lives could total more than $27bn. Who has heard of it?
Read Johann Hari’s entire piece, entitled ‘We all live in an oil slick now’ for more on our insidious, yet ultimately doomed, relationship with oil.
By Graham Land
Tags: amazon, BP, Corexit 9500, dispersant, Ecuador, EPA, evaporate, Hari, Johann, Louisiana, oil, rain, raining, TOXIC
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