The Fate of Nature

I knew the late Alaska governor and Secretary of the Interior Walter J. Hickel quite well, having worked with him writing a book. He died Friday.

Some of his qualities are unique and may never be seen again in the same man, especially in a society that no longer is as open to the path to wealth and power he followed. You can’t copy his vision, energy and astonishing intelligence–intelligence of a kind that people with book learning underestimated, often to their disadvantage. He was a brilliant man whose lack of education became an asset, because his ideas were never forced into conventional channels.

But there are other qualities we could emulate, if we had the courage to do so. Boldness. Wally Hickel acted on his beliefs. And honesty. He made it clear what he stood for, and let others judge whether or not they agreed. Sometimes Hickel’s advisors tried, with little success, to shield the world from ideas they thought we weren’t ready for, but he never hid anything he believed in. His letter blasting his boss, President Nixon, over the Viet Nam War was entirely in character.

Hickel pairs up well with former Governor Jay Hammond in that respect. They each had a consistent and complete world view and political philosophy. And in their great struggle of the 1970s for soul of Alaska, everyone knew exactly what they believed and where they wanted the state to go. Voters had the privilege of making a real choice. We didn’t know how lucky we were.

Compare that boldness and honesty to the behavior of our political leaders today. How much better would our system work with the clarity produced by those qualities alone?

Walter Hickel was a man of courage, and courage is something we could use a lot more of right now.

The Exxon Valdez began my career as a freelance writer 21 years ago, and now my book that discusses my experiences and lessons in that spill, due to come out in a month, has brought many reporters to my phone to talk about the Gulf of Mexico spill.

It’s a coincidence that my career got a boost from the last spill, and that my new book stands to get a boost from this one. Both events are tragedies that I would do almost anything to have prevented. The events have a lot in common.

One thing they don’t have in common, however, is the outcome. The spill in the Gulf of Mexico is not yet a hopeless catastrophe, as the spill in Alaska was after just three days. Through extraordinary good luck, the low-energy marshes appear to be so far free of heavy oiling. It’s possible that currents and success at the wellhead will yet prevent the worst effects of this spill.

It’s bad no matter what. That’s clear. But it’s nowhere near Exxon Valdez scale yet. I hope it won’t become that, as I know everyone does.

I wrote an op-ed appearing today in the LA Times about the apparent necessity to learn the same lesson over and over again: that offshore oil drilling leads to spills, and that spills can’t be cleaned up. We should use this moment to think about how to short-circuit this process of outrage and complacency into a policy we can believe in all the time.

The Arctic coast village of Point Hope, facing the prospect of Shell’s offshore drilling starting in less than two months, has circulated a letter to Interior Secretary Salazar that it hopes others will support. It’s very good. Here is a quote:

The impacts of a major spill in the Arctic would be widespread, long-lasting and disastrous. At risk are endangered whales, polar bears, seals, walruses, birds, fish and the Inupiat people’s subsistence culture. According to a 2008 environmental impact statement by MMS, there is a 40 percent chance of a large oil spill in the Chukchi Sea if oil development occurs. Given the technology that exists, it is nearly impossible to clean up an oil spill in the Arctic’s icy waters. What’s more, there is not enough scientific data to truly assess the impacts of drilling on the Arctic environment.

Industry’s claim that it has a good safety record offshore is simply not true. All you need to do is look at its record in the Gulf of Mexico to see the fallacy of these claims. Along with the eleven deaths as a result of the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe, MMS reports 509 fires caused at least 2 fatalities and 12 serious injuries on rigs in the gulf since 2006. That is aside from the hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil spilled into the previously rich waters of the Gulf. We will not let this happen in our Arctic waters.

In response to the 5,000 barrels (210,000 gallons) a day that are currently spilling uncontrolled into the Gulf as a result of the explosion and ensuing sinking of the rig, about 75 vessels, including skimmers, tugs, and barges were deployed; more than 174,000 ft of boom was assembled to contain the spill with more available if needed; some 98,000 gallons of dispersant had been deployed and another 75,000 gallons were available; and controlled in situ burning has been used as a last resort to protect fragile shoreline.1 Five staging areas were put in place, ready to protect sensitive shorelines. A field operations response office was set up with more than 1,000 people involved in the response effort both on and offshore. And now the military is being called in to help the efforts because industry was unable to fix the problem itself. Additionally, spill recovery efforts were halted temporarily in response to bad weather in the Gulf.

The Gulf of Mexico is one of the most industrialized areas of our nation, long used for oil and gas exploration and development. In the Arctic Ocean on the other hand, large gaps in knowledge about the ecology remain, infrastructure is sparse, and conditions harsh. If a spill occurred like the one in the Gulf, where would the 75 vessels come from? What about the 1000 people? And if they were sent from places other than Alaska, where would they be “staged”?

I’ve got a piece on the New York Times’ dotEarth blog about the need to give decision-making power about oil development to those who pay the costs for the inevitable accidents.

The Anchorage Daily News published my column on Saturday. The linkage of education and the environment goes down to our deepest level of how we learn to coexist on this planet.