Broken oil tanker brings ecological disaster

Posted by bex — 19 November 2002 at 9:00am - Comments
Oil spill from Prestige tanker

Oil spill from Prestige tanker

Latest...
Oil is now covering more than 500 km of the Spanish Coast, carried by the Gulf Stream. The Spanish Government has conceded that more than 20,000 metric tonnes has leaked from the Prestige. And experts expect the Portugese coast to be affected next...

Action!
As the clean-up operation continues to lack co-ordination, Greenpeace activists protested outside the Galician provincial Government building in La Coruna on Saturday - confronting the Vice President with buckets of oil collected from a nearby beach.

Greenpeace demands changes in legislation to make the oil industry fully accountable for environmental and economic damage caused by oil spills.

What happened?
The Prestige oil tanker has sunk, after breaking up 250 kilometres from Spain's northwest "Coast of Death". And as its cargo of 70,000 tonnes of oil continues to leak into the sea - contaminating birds and other wildlife - we face one of the world's worst environmental disasters.

Greenpeace volunteers are involved in rescue and clean up operations on the beaches of Galicia. But this area of the coast is a breeding and feeding ground for numerous sea birds, and an important habitat for a range of marine organisms. And once the oil has been released, it is hard to contain.

The Prestige was carrying more than double the amount of oil released by the devastating Exxon Valdez spill off the coast of Alaska in 1989. But, despite two days of good weather, the Spanish government failed to transfer fuel from the Prestige to a cistern ship. Instead they reacted by tugging the ship south into Portuguese waters.

The problem with oil...

This ecological disaster serves as a bleak reminder of the dangers of our illogical addiction to oil and other fossil fuels. For as long as we continue to rely on a global fossil fuel economy, we are resigned to shipping fuel oil and other hazardous chemical cargoes around the oceans, and will inevitably face more terrible accidents in the future. During the 1990s, there was a staggering average of one oil spill every two weeks!

Burning oil also causes global warming - the biggest environmental problem we face today. And the resulting floods, storms, rising temperatures and rising sea-levels are destroying the environment and killing people.

Oil is completely unnecessary - when we have abundant clean green renewable energy resources waiting in the wings. The only answer is to invest in renewable forms of energy, such as wind power. It really is that simple.

 

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