April is a month for environmental disasters. Tuesday 26 April is the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown, clouds of radiation seeping through the atmosphere, leaving land and crops devastated, milk contaminated, the countryside unsafe, and
April is a month for environmental disasters. Tuesday 26 April is the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown, clouds of radiation seeping through the atmosphere, leaving land and crops devastated, milk contaminated, the countryside unsafe, and the emissions not limited to the immediate locale. Even now, ongoing effects are not wholly known, with repercussions remaining in ever-present fears of early mortality and birth defects, and a continued impact on the reproductive capacities and general health of survivors and those born post-disaster.
So, too, with Deep Water Horizon: a year ago this month, BP was responsible for an oil rig spill, the effects of which are still being felt, the ultimate outcome in terms of damage to the environment remaining unknown. Despite claims to the contrary, the clean-up is yet to be fully accomplished, if ever it can be. Environmental realities speak to the failure of the notion that 'clean-up' can result in a return to what was. Persistent reports of dying marshes and tar balls floating in the Gulf of Mexico surface.
The worst oil spill in the history of the United States, the oil rig spill saw five million tones of oil fill Gulf Coast waters. The Deepwater Horizon disaster killed eleven rig workers, birds and wildlife. It matched or exceeded in intensity and environmental degradation the Exxon Valdez oil spill off the coast of Alaska wrought from March 1989. One was a tanker disaster, the other involved an oil rig: both had oil spewing by the tonne into the ocean.
Yet these environmental catastrophes are never lessons from which those who create them, or have the power to prevent them, learn. If they were, why would these devastating episodes recur? Despite parallels between the Exxon Valdez and Deepwater Horizon problems of tanker and oil rig management, and despite the causes of the oil rig spill remaining hazy or at least, for the public, unclarified, the oil industry, like the nuclear industry, continues on a 'business as usual' basis.
Greenpeace reports that oil companies are 'looking to drill dangerous deep water wells in UK waters'. The proposed drilling is planned on a scale and in project terms no different from the drilling at the heart of Deepwater Horizon. The west coast of the Shetland Islands is one of the targets.
Similarly, despite public outcry and protests, Chernobyl did not end or deter nuclear industry development. The nuclear meltdown following the Japan earthquake has been blamed on the type of nuclear reactor in use at Fukushima. Yet that same reactor design is in widespread use in the United States. Australia's uranium sales have not halted, despite well-organised and outspoken opposition. Although pre-dating Fukushima the federal government said nuclear power is not on the agenda and since Fukushima voices in support of nuclear power as a source of 'clean energy' have been silent or muted, it is apparent that the push for the nuclear option in Australia remains high on the agenda of some politicians, industrialists and mining companies.
A cavalier attitude towards the environment, and irresponsible'management' of dangerous substances and hazardous industries, is reflected in other major disasters. In the 1980s, noxious gases escaping from a Union Carbide (UCIL) plant in Bhopal instantly killed from 2000-4000 or in the weeks following, with estimates of an additional 8000 dead subsequently. Estimated injuries, according to official sources, numbered 558,125, with 3,900 cl