Friday, May 28, 2010

case studies

Oil Spill in the Amazon and the Politics Behind it

- In 2007 30,000 farmers living on the banks of the Amazon in the Napo region in Ecuador sued Texaco-Chevron under the claims that they had polluted the Amazon River in which their livelihood is dependent on. The lawsuit followed a rupture an oil pipeline going through the Amazon, said to be caused by “natural causes” the rupture in the pipeline had resulted in 14,000 barrels of oil spilled. There has been 117 oil spills in Ecuador in the past 30 years, activist have claimed that the total amount of barrels spilled in the past 30 years has been greater than the amount spilled during the Exxon Valdez Disaster. This is a classic scenario of Oil fields and refineries dumping their waste in the very fragile ecosystems, the only difference is that people have found the courage to step up to big corporations and case may result in Texaco having to pay multi-million dollars to 30,000 farmers





The Effect of Oil on Animals
- To date is has been almost 20 years since the Exxon Valdez disaster has occurred in the Prince William Sound, but it has been reported that Otters and other sea animals are still suffering from the effects of the oil spill. Animal recovery when it comes to oil must be very swift for any chance of survival and is due to large amount of volunteers, but that still isn’t enough ,every year half a million birds die because of spilt oil. Due to the effort of various organizations the amounts of death in birds have decreased each year because of close monitoring once released. Humans are also affected by the death of animal, for example fishing villages in along the Prince William Sound have suffered heavily because of the spill. Fish have been contaminated and their eggs also become contaminated as result villages lose their livelihoodood and it could be very hard to recover from such a disaster. This goes to show that humans should be more caring about oil spills knowing that it could affect them too




The Problem with Burning Oil
- On April 20 2010 deepwater well owned by British Petroleum exploded killing 11 platform workers. This disaster makes Exxon Valdez look like nothing; the Oil slick can be seen from space. There have been many preventative efforts in containing the Oil Spill some immediate methods have been using regular oil booms to contain the oil in a specific area and burning the oil. Burning oil as part of the recovery of oil is the most frowned upon because it is heavily frowned upon by environmentalist because of the amount of gases it releases into the atmosphere. Oil also affects the flight of bird planning up above, another reason why dependency on oil is bad because even the recovery process is harmful to the environment.

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