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Title:
The oil spill's unseen culprits, victims | Carl Safina | TEDxOilSpill
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Description:
The Gulf oil spill dwarfs comprehension, but we know this much: it's bad. Carl Safina scrapes out the facts in this blood-boiling cross-examination, arguing that the consequences will stretch far beyond the Gulf -- and many so-called solutions are making the situation worse.
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This is the ocean as I used to know it.
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And I find that since I've been
in the Gulf a couple of times,
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I really kind of am traumatized
because whenever I look at the ocean now,
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no matter where I am,
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even where I know
that none of the oil has gone,
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I sort of see slicks,
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and I'm finding that I'm very much
haunted by it.
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But what I want to talk to you about today
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is a lot of things that try
to put all of this in context,
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not just about the oil eruption,
but what it means and why it has happened.
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First, just a little bit about me.
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I'm basically just a guy
that likes to go fishing
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ever since I was a little kid,
and because I did,
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I wound up studying sea birds
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to try to stay in the coastal habitats
that I so loved.
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And now I mainly write books
about how the ocean is changing,
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and the ocean is certainly
changing very rapidly.
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Now we saw this graphic earlier on,
that we really live on a hard marble
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that has just a slight bit
of wetness to it.
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It's like you dipped a marble in water.
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And the same thing with the atmosphere:
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If you took all the atmosphere
and rolled it up in a ball,
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you would get that little sphere
of gas on the right.
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So we live on the most fragile
little soap bubble you can imagine,
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a very sacred soap bubble,
but one that is very, very easy to affect.
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And all the burning of oil and coal
and gas, all the fossil fuels,
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have changed the atmosphere greatly.
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Carbon dioxide level
has gone up and up and up.
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We're warming the climate.
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So the blowout in the Gulf
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is just a little piece
of a much larger problem
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that we have with the energy
that we use to run civilization.
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Beyond warming,
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we have the problem
of the oceans getting more acidified...
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And already measurably so,
and already affecting animals.
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Now in the laboratory, if you take a clam
and you put it in the pH that is not 8.1,
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which is the normal pH
of seawater, but 7.5,
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it dissolves in about three days.
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If you take a sea urchin larva from 8.1,
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put it in a pH of 7.7...
Not a huge change...
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It becomes deformed and dies.
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Already, commercial oyster larvae
are dying at large scales in some places.
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Coral reefs are growing slower
in some places because of this problem.
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So this really matters.
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Now, let's take a little tour
around the Gulf a little bit.
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One of the things that really impresses me
about the people in the Gulf:
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They are really, really aquatic people.
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And they can handle water.
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They can handle a hurricane
that comes and goes.
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When the water goes down,
they know what to do.
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But when it's something other than water,
and their water habitat changes,
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they don't have many options.
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In fact, those entire communities
really don't have many options.
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They don't have another thing they can do.
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They can't go and work
in the local hotel business
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because there isn't one
in their community.
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If you go to the Gulf and you look around,
you do see a lot of oil.
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You see a lot of oil on the ocean.
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You see a lot of oil on the shoreline.
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If you go to the site of the blowout,
it looks pretty unbelievable.
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It looks like you just emptied
the oil pan in your car,
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and you just dumped it in the ocean.
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And one of the really
most incredible things, I think,
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is that there's nobody out there
trying to collect it
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at the site where it is densest.
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Parts of the ocean there
look just absolutely apocalyptic.
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You go in along the shore,
you can find it everywhere.
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It's really messy.
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If you go to the places
where it's just arriving,
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like the eastern part
of the Gulf, in Alabama,
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there's still people using the beach
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while there are people
cleaning up the beach.
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And they have a very strange
way of cleaning up the beach.
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They're not allowed to put
more than 10 pounds of sand
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in a 50-gallon plastic bag.
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They have thousands
and thousands of plastic bags.
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I don't know what they'll do
with all that stuff.
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Meanwhile, there are still
people trying to use the beach.
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They don't see the sign
that says: "Stay out of the water."
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Their kids are in the water;
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they're getting tar all over
their clothes and their sandals...
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It's a mess.
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If you go to where the oil has been
for a while, it's an even bigger mess.
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And there's basically
nobody there anymore,
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a few people trying to keep using it.
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You see people who are really
shell-shocked.
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They are very hardworking people.
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All they know about life
is they get up in the morning,
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and if their engine starts,
they go to work.
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They always felt that
they could rely on the assurances
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that nature brought them
through the ecosystem of the Gulf.
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They're finding that their world
is really collapsing.
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And so you can see, literally,
signs of their shock...
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signs of their outrage...
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signs of their anger...
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and signs of their grief.
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These are the things that you can see.
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There's a lot you can't see,
also, underwater.
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What's going on underwater?
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Well, some people say
there are oil plumes.
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Some people say there are not oil plumes.
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And Congressman Markey asks, you know,
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"Is it going to take a submarine ride
to see if there are really oil plumes?"
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But I couldn't take a submarine ride...
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Especially between the time I knew
I was coming here and today...
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So I had to do a little experiment myself
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to see if there was oil
in the Gulf of Mexico.
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So this is the Gulf of Mexico...
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sparkling place full of fish.
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And I created a little oil spill
in the Gulf of Mexico.
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And I learned, in fact,
I confirmed the hypothesis
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that oil and water don't mix...
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until you add a dispersant...
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and then...
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they start mixing.
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And you add a little energy
from the wind and the waves,
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and you get a big mess,
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a big mess that you can't possibly clean,
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you can't touch, you can't extract
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and, I think most importantly...
This is what I think...
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You can't see it.
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I think it's being hidden on purpose.
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Now this is such a catastrophe
and such a mess
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that lots of stuff is leaking out
on the edges of the information stream.
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But as many people have said,
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there's a large attempt
to suppress what's going on.
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Personally, I think that the dispersants
are a major strategy to hide the body,
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because we put the murderer
in charge of the crime scene.
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But you can see it.
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You can see where the oil
is concentrated at the surface,
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and then it is attacked,
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because they don't want
the evidence, in my opinion.
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OK.
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We heard that bacteria eat oil?
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So do sea turtles.
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When it breaks up,
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it has a long way to go
before it gets down to bacteria.
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Turtles eat it.
It gets in the gills of fish.
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These guys have to swim around through it.
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I heard the most incredible story today
when I was on the train coming here.
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A writer named Ted Williams called me,
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and he was asking me
a couple of questions about what I saw,
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because he's writing an article
for Audubon magazine.
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He said that he had been in the Gulf
a little while ago; like about a week ago,
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and a guy who had
been a recreational fishing guide
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took him out to show him what's going on.
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That guide's entire calendar year
is canceled bookings.
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He has no bookings left.
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Everybody wanted their deposit back,
everybody is fleeing.
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That's the story of thousands of people.
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But he told Ted
that on the last day he went out,
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a bottlenose dolphin
suddenly appeared next to the boat,
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and it was splattering oil
out its blowhole.
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And he moved away
because it was his last fishing trip,
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and he knew that the dolphins scare fish.
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So he moved away from it,
turned around a few minutes later,
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it was right next to the side
of the boat again.
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He said that in 30 years of fishing
he had never seen a dolphin do that.
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And he felt that...
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(Sigh)
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he felt that it was
coming to ask for help.
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Sorry.
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Now, in the Exxon Valdez spill,
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about 30 percent of the killer whales
died in the first few months.
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Their numbers have never recovered.
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So the recovery rate of all this stuff
is going to be variable.
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It's going to take longer for some things.
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And some things, I think,
will probably come back a little faster.
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The other thing about the Gulf
that is important
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is that there are a lot of animals
that concentrate in the Gulf
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at certain parts of the year.
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So the Gulf is a really
important piece of water...
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More important than a similar volume
of water in the open Atlantic Ocean.
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These tuna swim the entire ocean.
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They get in the Gulf Stream,
they go all the way to Europe.
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When it comes time to spawn,
they come inside,
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and these two tuna that were tagged,
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you can see them on the spawning grounds
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very much right in the area of the slick.
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They're probably having,
at the very least,
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a catastrophic spawning season this year.
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I'm hoping that maybe the adults
are avoiding that dirty water.
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They don't usually like to go into water
that is very cloudy anyway.
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But these are really
high-performance athletic animals.
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I don't know what this kind of stuff
will do in their gills.
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I don't know if it'll affect the adults.
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If it's not, it's certainly affecting
their eggs and larvae,
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I would certainly think.
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But if you look at that graph
that goes down and down and down,
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that's what we've done to this species
through overfishing over many decades.
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So while the oil spill, the leak,
the eruption, is a catastrophe,
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I think it's important to keep in mind
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that we've done a lot to affect
what's in the ocean, for a very long time.
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It's not like we're starting
with something that's been OK.
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We're starting with something
that's had a lot of stresses
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and a lot of problems to begin with.
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If you look around at the birds,
there are a lot of birds in the Gulf
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that concentrate in the Gulf
at certain times of the year,
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but then leave.
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And they populate much larger areas.
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For instance, most of the birds
in this picture are migratory birds.
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They were all on the Gulf in May,
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while oil was starting
to come ashore in certain places.
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Down on the lower left there
are ruddy turnstones and sanderlings.
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They breed in the High Arctic,
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and they winter
down in southern South America.
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But they concentrate in the Gulf
and then fan out all across the Arctic.
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I saw birds that breed
in Greenland, in the Gulf.
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So this is a hemispheric issue.
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The economic effects
go at least nationally in many ways.
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The biological effects
are certainly hemispheric.
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I think that this is one of the most
absolutely mind-boggling examples
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of total unpreparedness
that I can even think of.
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Even when the Japanese
bombed Pearl Harbor,
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at least they shot back.
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And we just seem to be unable
to figure out what to do.
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There was nothing ready,
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and, you know, as we can see
by what they're doing.
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Mainly what they're doing
is booms and dispersants.
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The booms are absolutely
not made for open water.
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They don't even attempt to corral
the oil where it is most concentrated.
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They get near shore...
Look at these two boats.
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That one on the right
is called Fishing Fool.
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And I think, you know, that's a great name
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for boats that think
that they're going to do anything
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to make a dent in this,
by dragging a boom between them
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when there are literally
hundreds of thousands of square miles
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in the Gulf right now
with oil at the surface.
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The dispersants make the oil
go right under the booms.
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The booms are only
about 13 inches in diameter.
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So it's just absolutely crazy.
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Here are shrimp boats employed.
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There are hundreds of shrimp boats
employed to drag booms instead of nets.
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Here they are working.
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You can see easily
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that all the oily water
just goes over the back of the boom.
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All they're doing is stirring it.
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It's just ridiculous.
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Also, for all the shoreline
that has booms...
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Hundreds and hundreds
of miles of shoreline...
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All of the shoreline that has booms,
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there's adjacent shoreline
that doesn't have any booms.
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There is ample opportunity for oil
and dirty water to get in behind them.
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And that lower photo,
that's a bird colony that has been boomed.
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Everybody's trying to protect
the bird colonies there.
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Well, as an ornithologist,
I can tell you that birds fly, and that...
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(Laughter)
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and that booming a bird colony
doesn't do it; it doesn't do it.
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These birds make a living
by diving into the water.
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In fact...
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really what I think
they should do, if anything...
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They're trying so hard
to protect those nests...
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Actually, if they destroyed
every single nest,
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some of the birds would leave,
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and that would be better
for them this year.
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As far as cleaning them...
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I don't mean to cast any aspersion
on people cleaning birds.
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It's really, really important
that we express our compassion.
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I think that's the most important
thing that people have, is compassion.
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It's really important
to get those images and to show it.
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But really, where are those birds
going to get released to?
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It's like taking somebody
out of a burning building,
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treating them for smoke inhalation
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and sending them back into the building,
because the oil is still gushing.
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I refuse to acknowledge this
as anything like an accident.
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I think that this is the result
of gross negligence.
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(Applause)
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Not just BP.
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BP operated very sloppily
and very recklessly because they could.
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And they were allowed to do so
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because of the absolute failure
of oversight of the government
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that is supposed to be
our government, protecting us.
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It turns out that...
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You see this sign on every commercial
vessel in the United States...
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You know, if you spilled
a couple of gallons of oil,
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you would be in big trouble.
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And you have to really wonder
who are the laws made for,
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and who has gotten above the laws.
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And there are things
that we can do in the future.
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We could have the kinds of equipment
that we would really need.
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It would not take
an awful lot to anticipate
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that after making 30,000 holes
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in the sea floor of the Gulf
of Mexico looking for oil,
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oil might start coming out of one of them.
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And you'd have some idea of what to do.
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That's certainly
one of the things we need to do.
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But I think we have to understand
where this leak really started from.
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It really started from the destruction
of the idea that the government is there
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because it's our government,
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meant to protect
the larger public interest.
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So I think that the oil blowout,
the bank bailout,
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the mortgage crisis and all these things
are absolutely symptoms of the same cause.
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We still seem to understand that at least,
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we need the police to protect us
from a few bad people.
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And even though the police
can be a little annoying at times...
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Giving us tickets and stuff like that...
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Nobody says that we should
just get rid of them.
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But in the entire rest
of government right now
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and for the last at least 30 years,
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there has been a culture of deregulation
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that is caused directly by the people
who we need to be protected from,
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buying the government out from under us.
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(Applause)
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Now this has been a problem
for a very, very long time.
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You can see that corporations were illegal
at the founding of America,
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and even Thomas Jefferson complained
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that they were already bidding defiance
to the laws of our country.
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OK, people who say they're conservative,
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if they really wanted to be
really conservative and patriotic,
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they would tell
these corporations to go to hell.
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That's what it would really mean
to be conservative.
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So what we really need to do
is regain the idea
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that it's our government
safeguarding our interests,
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and regain a sense of unity
and common cause in our country
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that really has been lost.
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I think there are signs of hope.
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We seem to be waking up a little bit.
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The Glass-Steagall Act...
Which was really to protect us
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from the kind of thing
that caused the recession to happen,
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and the bank meltdown and all that stuff
that required the bailouts...
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That was put in effect in 1933,
was systematically destroyed.
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Now there's a mood to put
some of that stuff back in place,
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but the lobbyists are already there
trying to weaken the regulations
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after the legislation has just passed.
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So it's a continued fight.
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It's a historic moment right now.
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We're either going to have an absolutely
unmitigated catastrophe
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of this oil leak in the Gulf,
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or we will make the moment
we need out of this,
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as many people have noted today.
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There's certainly a common theme
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about needing to make
the moment out of this.
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We've been through this before
with other ways of offshore drilling.
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The first offshore wells
were called whales.
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The first offshore drills
were called harpoons.
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We emptied the ocean
of the whales at that time.
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Now are we stuck with this?
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Ever since we lived in caves,
every time we wanted any energy,
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we lit something on fire,
and that is still what we're doing.
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We're still lighting something on fire
every time we want energy.
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And people say we can't have clean energy
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because it's too expensive.
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Who says it's too expensive?
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People who sell us fossil fuels.
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We've been here before with energy,
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and people saying the economy
cannot withstand a switch,
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because the cheapest energy was slavery.
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Energy is always a moral issue.
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It's an issue that is moral right now.
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It's a matter of right and wrong.
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Thank you very much.
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(Applause)
