Exxon Valdez Oil Spill : Joseph Hazelwood Prince William Sound Blog :
The Exxon Valdez may be the most famous oil spill, but it’s not even close to being the largest. Ten years before the incident in Alaska, the Atlantic Empress collided with the Aegean Captain off Trinidad and Tobago in the eastern Caribbean. The resulting spill dumped 287,000 metric tons (about 84 million gallons) into the sea, compared with the Exxon Valdez’s 37,000 metric tons (about 10.8 million gallons). The Exxon Valdez doesn’t even make the top ten in terms of size of spill.
On the other hand, none of the oil from the Atlantic Empress/Aegean Captain incident came ashore. The crude from the Exxon Valdez’s tanks is still being dug out of the beaches in Prince William Sound. The resulting damage to shore life, fisheries, tourism, and recreation has been an economic disaster for the Prince William Sound region, even leading to the bankruptcy of the Chugach native corporation.
Today’s changing weather patterns, global warming, environmental degradation, food production challenges and state of the human condition can all be attributed directly to the coming of age of man’s ingenuity: the Industrial Revolution. The list of related effects does not stop there.
Just as quickly as the Industrial Revolution initiated the new global golden age of prosperity and monumental improvements to the human condition, it has just as quickly provided ecological challenges and sharp focus on the need for control and sustainability. Why?
Merely two and a half centuries ago, human civilization began to tap into a seemingly inexhaustible energy source in fossil fuels – initially coal – to usher in the age of industrialization. As the use of this new energy source spread across the globe – including the use of natural gas and oil – humans began to develop more robust lives with improved healthcare, better and more abundant food supplies and rapidly improved housing and transportation. It was the beginning of major technological transitions from the use of hand tools to power tools and ultimately high technology enabling production on very large scales and robust economic development. This is the continuing legacy of the Industrial Revolution.
The fact is, all the industrial and technological developments to date have not been able to keep up with the unbridled and unapprised employment of those advances by such a mushrooming population. It’s simply due to the sheer numbers of people using (and overusing) limited resources.
