DarrinS
05-19-2010, 06:06 PM
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2010/05/19/2010-05-19_maybe_we_shouldnt_clean_up_the_oil_spill.html
As we all well know, the cost of doing nothing is steep. That's why the phrase, "cost of doing nothing" exists, presumably.
So whenever some crisis arises, no one wants to be perceived as insensitive to the high price of inaction by suggesting that we wait and see, slow down or let things play out. Instead, we're all very quick to say, in desperate but authoritative voices, "Well, we have to do something."
After the 2008 financial collapse "the cost of doing nothing" was all anyone wanted to talk about.
We didn't know exactly what to do, but we knew that doing nothing wasn't an option. So in the end, we decided to throw a catastrophic amount of money at the problem. And good thing, too - otherwise, I'm told, unemployment might have surpassed 8%.
When it comes to the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, it seems that doing nothing is even farther outside the parameters of politically acceptable suggestions.
But since I don't have a re-election to worry about, I'm happy to go out on a ledge and be the one to say it, terrible as it sounds: Let's leave the oil right where it is.
Before you send Al Gore's minions out to arrest me, you should know that this seemingly cavalier suggestion isn't borne out of apathy or indifference, but out of pragmatism and, yes, compassion. And though I'm no oil or environmental expert, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that attempting to clean up the Deepwater Horizon spill that dumped around 95,000 barrels of oil into the Gulf will be costly and ineffective, and might even be more harmful to the natural habitat than the oil itself.
So I did a little probing - or drilling, as it were - into the consequences of doing nothing. Here's what I found:
Decades after the Exxon Valdez spill, the technology used to clean up spills is virtually unchanged: barges, booms, burning, dispersing, scrubbing.
"The basic tool kit hasn't changed dramatically, or at all," said Jeff Short, a scientist with the environmental group Oceana.
The problem with that is, these methods weren't effective then, and they aren't now. Dispersants, for one, transfer oil particles from the sea surface to the sea water in an effort to save shorelines from oil build-up. In theory, anyway.
It only works if there's significant wave energy, and even in that case, the oil that's transferred to the water column is hazardous to hundreds of other organisms.
Cornell University biologist Robert Howarth told me that dispersants should be used very sparingly, and that there are better, less toxic alternatives to the 250,000 gallons of Corexit that BP has already released into the Gulf
But other chemicals used to "clean" the spill can wreak even more havoc on an already weakened ecosystem. Terry Hazen, an ecologist in Berkeley Lab's Earth Sciences Division, pointed out that oil is, in fact, a biological product that naturally degrades over time: "Some of the detergents that are typically used to clean-up spill sites are more toxic than the oil itself, in which case it would be better to leave the site alone and allow microbes to do what they do best."
Cleaning off oil-slicked birds may sound warm and fuzzy, but it isn't. In fact, German biologist Silvia Gaus, of the Wattenmeer National Park, is one of a number of experts who say that putting the birds down would be more humane.
"Kill, don't clean," she says. "According to serious studies, the middle-term survival rate of oil-soaked birds is under 1%. We, therefore, oppose cleaning birds."
Then, of course, there's the crass subject of money, which no one likes to talk about unless of course it concerns the "cost of doing nothing." But the fact is, BP has already spent $625 million on spill response, and experts suggest the spill could cost them as much as $14 billion.
While some of that is going toward containment efforts - stopping the spill from getting worse, which is critical - wouldn't it be something if the money BP was dumping into cleanup efforts was directed instead to Louisiana's ailing fishing industry, which is going to lose $2.5 billion?
Or to Florida's hemorrhaging tourism industry, which will be drained of $3 billion?
BP has, thus far, given Florida a mere $25 million, and $15 million each to Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi for recovery efforts.
In this economy, that's a drop in the bucket.
So if cleanup is costly, ineffective and potentially harmful, then aren't we just doing it for appearances? (And not actual appearances, but, worse, political appearances?) Indeed, if we can just get over the way it sounds, "the cost of doing nothing" might actually be far less than the cost of doing something.
As we all well know, the cost of doing nothing is steep. That's why the phrase, "cost of doing nothing" exists, presumably.
So whenever some crisis arises, no one wants to be perceived as insensitive to the high price of inaction by suggesting that we wait and see, slow down or let things play out. Instead, we're all very quick to say, in desperate but authoritative voices, "Well, we have to do something."
After the 2008 financial collapse "the cost of doing nothing" was all anyone wanted to talk about.
We didn't know exactly what to do, but we knew that doing nothing wasn't an option. So in the end, we decided to throw a catastrophic amount of money at the problem. And good thing, too - otherwise, I'm told, unemployment might have surpassed 8%.
When it comes to the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, it seems that doing nothing is even farther outside the parameters of politically acceptable suggestions.
But since I don't have a re-election to worry about, I'm happy to go out on a ledge and be the one to say it, terrible as it sounds: Let's leave the oil right where it is.
Before you send Al Gore's minions out to arrest me, you should know that this seemingly cavalier suggestion isn't borne out of apathy or indifference, but out of pragmatism and, yes, compassion. And though I'm no oil or environmental expert, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that attempting to clean up the Deepwater Horizon spill that dumped around 95,000 barrels of oil into the Gulf will be costly and ineffective, and might even be more harmful to the natural habitat than the oil itself.
So I did a little probing - or drilling, as it were - into the consequences of doing nothing. Here's what I found:
Decades after the Exxon Valdez spill, the technology used to clean up spills is virtually unchanged: barges, booms, burning, dispersing, scrubbing.
"The basic tool kit hasn't changed dramatically, or at all," said Jeff Short, a scientist with the environmental group Oceana.
The problem with that is, these methods weren't effective then, and they aren't now. Dispersants, for one, transfer oil particles from the sea surface to the sea water in an effort to save shorelines from oil build-up. In theory, anyway.
It only works if there's significant wave energy, and even in that case, the oil that's transferred to the water column is hazardous to hundreds of other organisms.
Cornell University biologist Robert Howarth told me that dispersants should be used very sparingly, and that there are better, less toxic alternatives to the 250,000 gallons of Corexit that BP has already released into the Gulf
But other chemicals used to "clean" the spill can wreak even more havoc on an already weakened ecosystem. Terry Hazen, an ecologist in Berkeley Lab's Earth Sciences Division, pointed out that oil is, in fact, a biological product that naturally degrades over time: "Some of the detergents that are typically used to clean-up spill sites are more toxic than the oil itself, in which case it would be better to leave the site alone and allow microbes to do what they do best."
Cleaning off oil-slicked birds may sound warm and fuzzy, but it isn't. In fact, German biologist Silvia Gaus, of the Wattenmeer National Park, is one of a number of experts who say that putting the birds down would be more humane.
"Kill, don't clean," she says. "According to serious studies, the middle-term survival rate of oil-soaked birds is under 1%. We, therefore, oppose cleaning birds."
Then, of course, there's the crass subject of money, which no one likes to talk about unless of course it concerns the "cost of doing nothing." But the fact is, BP has already spent $625 million on spill response, and experts suggest the spill could cost them as much as $14 billion.
While some of that is going toward containment efforts - stopping the spill from getting worse, which is critical - wouldn't it be something if the money BP was dumping into cleanup efforts was directed instead to Louisiana's ailing fishing industry, which is going to lose $2.5 billion?
Or to Florida's hemorrhaging tourism industry, which will be drained of $3 billion?
BP has, thus far, given Florida a mere $25 million, and $15 million each to Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi for recovery efforts.
In this economy, that's a drop in the bucket.
So if cleanup is costly, ineffective and potentially harmful, then aren't we just doing it for appearances? (And not actual appearances, but, worse, political appearances?) Indeed, if we can just get over the way it sounds, "the cost of doing nothing" might actually be far less than the cost of doing something.