Just Another Oil Spill

It was more than a little bit depressing to type the above title. Depressing because it is, apparently for many people, no longer newsworthy or perhaps even morally correct to become outraged that there is yet another oil spill in some ocean. In spite of the obvious dangers of drilling down into the rock beneath the oceans, especially off of such places as the coast of Newfoundland where the winter storms can blow for days, we continue as a country to insist that off shore drilling or the transportation of oil products in large quantities is safe.

Last week, at a site 350km off of the coast of Newfoundland, at least 250,000 litres of crude oil were spilled - I say "at least" because no one really knows how much oil was spilled as the seas are too rough to either determine the extent of the leak or for that matter ensure that the problem is resolved. The oil well could be still leaking and we just do not know. According to the Financial Post (https://business. financialpost. com/ commodities/ energy/n-l-s-largest-ever-oil-spill-is-now-impossible-to-clean-up-regulatory-board), it is probably now too late to even think about any type of clean up as the spill has been broken up too much by the storm. While there is some concern that the flocks of murres and dovekies are at significant risk, the risk to plankton and all of the species that live off of plankton, either directly or indirectly is incalculable.

We can get really excited when a picture of a cute kitten is posted on Facebook, we can get all outraged if Trump says or does something outrageous (which is an almost daily occurrence) but there is almost no news on what happened just last week, something that will have consequences for months if not for years. If we feel that the risk to the coastline of British Columbia is far too great to allow the expansion of the Kinder Morgan pipeline, should we not be just as angry about governments approving off shore drilling on our other coast?

Why don't we care? It may be that the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador is just a bit too isolate, a bit too far removed from the rest of Canada (Newfoundlanders may feel that way all too often) for anyone to care; it may be that somehow we value some parts of Canada more than others, or it may be that most of us, most of the time, are just selfish, self-centred, two faced twits who lack the capacity to exercise any foresight at all. Regardless of why, we need to develop a cross-Canada awareness of the dangers of oil exploration/exploitation. The Province of Newfoundland and Labrador allows for off shore drilling for exactly the same reason that Alberta has allowed the development of the Tar Sands - they need the money generated by the production of oil to pay its bills. We need to change how the country supports the different regions. We collectively need to discuss and then determine how we want to support each region without expecting them to put their soil, their air or their seas at risk. We need to decide what is important and we need to, again collectively, decide if we are prepared to pay the price of doing the right thing.

But in the meantime, perhaps we could use the various social media platforms to talk about the important stuff; perhaps we need to spend less time posting pictures of cute pets, what we ate or some wise words that some famous person may have said (or not said)and instead to actually share ideas and solutions with each other.