A Look Down the Trail: Oil

At first, the BP oil spill didn’t seem like a big deal. Perhaps in part because of how the media portrayed it, and in part because of a complete lack of understanding that it couldn’t be easily stopped.

Now we open the paper or read online news with trepidation about whether or not the latest effort to stop the flow has worked. What will we do to address an ecological disaster of such catastrophic proportions? It seems that road problems and road removal pale in comparison to the gulf oil spill, and it appears that neither BP nor the government have any clue how to solve this problem.

We can draw two lessons from the gulf oil spill that are relevant to Wildlands CPR’s work. First, there’s a need for strong environmental regulations on resource extraction, combined with effective oversight and accountability. Second, we’re going to need a restoration effort of epic proportions once they figure out a way to stop the leak.

Lesson One: From what’s been reported, BP challenged and broke a lot of rules
in drilling this well, resulting in worse than a worst case scenario. When industries have the potential to cause environmental or fiscal harm, they must be regulated, and those regulations must have real teeth. This is as significant for public lands resource extraction (and even road building) as it is for offshore drilling. Let’s hope that this oil disaster, combined with the financial disaster brought about by lax regulation of the banking system, can help Americans understand the benefits of effective regulation.

Lesson Two: People are going to be rightfully focused on mitigating the impacts of this disaster for the foreseeable future, but maybe this provides an opportunity to talk about ecological restoration beyond the gulf. Wildlands CPR’s work is not just promoting restoration through road reclamation. We updated and broadened our mission last year: “to revive and protect wild places by promoting watershed restoration that improves fish and wildlife habitat, provides clean water and enhances community economies.” Though we focus mostly on road, transportation and economic issues related to watershed restoration, our mission does not limit us to this arena – only our capacity does.

Ecological restoration is likely to be one of the defining issues of the 21st Century, made only more pressing by disasters like that in the gulf. While scientists understand much about some restoration practices, others are extremely challenging – leaving much to be studied, from both a practical and a theoretical perspective. And also leaving much to be regulated, whether we like it or not.
But restoration cannot become a rationalization for ecological destruction. While
environmental activists, government employees and BP staff are pulling their hair out trying to figure out what to do about the gulf, there are too many instances where the fact that we can fix something later is used as a partial justification for destruction.

The gulf oil spill should be considered a clarion call for a plethora of ecological and energy related issues, including regulation and restoration. And if that call is not just heard, but answered, then perhaps there will be at least the tiniest of silver linings to the black clouds of oil that are currently destroying the gulf.