Toxic Soup: How We Can Help Prevent Another Oil Spill

Julie Packard, executive director of the Monterey Bay Aquarium, is part of Change.org's Changemakers network, comprised of leading voices for social change. "Toxic Soup" is a Change.org series focusing on how the Deepwater Horizon oil spill impacts the Gulf's seafood industry and marine life. For more posts on this issue, see here, here, here, and here.

I’ve spent most of my adult life trying to raise the profile of our oceans and their importance in our lives. So it’s a cruel irony to at last see the oceans in the headlines every day, through the nightmare story of the largest oil spill in American history.

The catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico began on April 22 – the 40th anniversary of Earth Day. For most people, mourning for the human lives lost and lamenting dead wildlife and oiled marshes will fade with time. But for people and wildlife in the region, the after-effects will last for decades.

Twenty years after the Exxon Valdez, that oil spill lives on, in the form of chronic health problems for wildlife and impacts on the ecosystem as lingering hydrocarbons work their way through the food web. Scientists are still working to understand the lasting damage that’s been done.

In the Gulf, it’s clear that all players were grossly under-prepared to prevent and respond to a spill of this magnitude. But amid the finger-pointing, there’s a missing player: We, the public. Why haven’t we learned from past experience? Why can’t we muster the political will to approve policies and funding that our oceans and coasts deserve?

We have the opportunity—right now—to do just that.

We must cut our use of fossil fuels, and reassess the risks of offshore oil drilling. On a personal level, we must find new ways to fuel our cars and heat our homes. If you include the carbon pollution from burning of fossil fuels produced offshore with the direct impacts of oil spills on fisheries, tourism and wildlife, it’s clear that offshore oil represents a high-risk, high-cost approach to meeting our energy needs. We need to tighten regulation of offshore oil development, and strengthen federal oversight of existing operations.

More importantly, we can’t drill our way out of our dependence on foreign oil. We must not trade the health of our oceans and coasts for a few more barrels of oil. Rather, we must invest in new sources of clean, renewable energy to create green jobs, stimulate our economy and safeguard our environment.

We must immediately invest in learning more about how our living oceans function. We need a massive scientific investment to understand and monitor marine ecosystems so we can manage them as interconnected, living systems. The Gulf spill is a grim reminder of how much we’re “flying blind” in trying to direct immediate cleanup and restoration efforts. We know little about how oil pollution and dispersants affect life in deep water, or lower on the food web (not to mention how to restore sensitive marshlands).

The President and Congress must strengthen existing research programs and create new ones that focus on the health of entire marine ecosystems like the Gulf region—and on how human uses impact the social and environmental fabric of our coastal communities.

We need a coordinated national ocean policy so federal agencies can work toward a common goal of achieving healthy oceans. In the wake of the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill, the U.S. enacted significant environmental protection laws to safeguard our air, fresh water, and land. It’s now time to articulate a comprehensive policy to protect our oceans and coasts. I commend the Obama Administration for taking substantial steps in this direction. Now the President and Congress must act to affirm that ocean health is a national priority. Only then will we be able to restore our oceans, and sustain their immeasurable value to humanity for generations to come.

I know that people are ready and willing to act. It’s a message I hear when I talk with visitors who’ve been inspired by amazing animals in the exhibits at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and who eagerly recount their favorite ocean memories: a beach vacation as a child, a fishing trip, or a sunset shared from the shore.

We are—all of us—deeply connected with the oceans. When people learn about the threats facing ocean animals they love or the beaches they enjoy, they are eager to do their part and make a difference. And there’s so much we can do.

If nothing else, the Gulf oil spill has brought into focus all that we stand to lose. Now it’s up to us to act, for a future with healthy oceans.

Photo credit: Utmetrocowboy via Wikimedia Commons