The article in the url below presents BP's 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in a new light:
"The Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico a dozen years ago was a human and environmental tragedy. It killed 11 people, dumped millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf, and cost BP Plc more than $65 billion in cleanup costs and damage payments. But had all that oil instead been sold and used, it would have been even deadlier and more devastating to the environment."
The author is actually quoting a tweet on this topic that went viral soon after it was posted:
Apparently, the argument is not only compelling, but relatively straightforward:
"The spill caused an estimated 200 million gallons of oil to flow into the Gulf of Mexico. Burning as many gallons of oil and diesel in combustion engines would have emitted over 1.4 million tons of CO₂, not even counting, for example, emissions from refining and transporting the oil. Translated into average lives lost due to the resulting climate change implies about 325 deaths over the course of the century, linked to higher temperatures alone. That doesn't include deaths from the fine particulate matter generated by burning that fuel, which could amount to another 350 premature deaths in a year."
Although it seems unnecessary and unrelated to the point he was trying to make, the original author was forced to add a qualification later as the tweet spread:
"Twitter being Twitter, the responses necessitated a follow-up from David: 'My point isn't that we should spill crude oil.' We shouldn't. There are plenty of other environmental costs not captured by the 11 deaths and $65 billion. The devastating impact on wildlife can only be partially reflected in any monetary damage number. Some of the oil spilled burned uncontrollably, again releasing CO₂. Oil that's not burned but eventually evaporates also causes plenty of environmental harm."
Needless to say:
"Alas, there is a big difference between a statistical calculation based on global damage estimates and being able to put faces and names to deaths, as to those on the Deepwater Horizon oil platform. Eleven deaths are a tragedy, while 325 statistically estimated ones are just that, a statistic."
Nevertheless, the ability to calculate a direct connection between environmental harm and human lives lost is becoming more developed and accurate:
"Thanks to rapid advances in the new field of attribution science, climate-related deaths and other damages can now be linked more directly to tons of CO₂ emitted. Indeed, an increasing number of lawsuits are closing in on establishing a proximate cause via climate damages, but no oil company so far has been forced to pay damages linked to the burning of its products sold to customers."
The author then discusses the contextual nature of our assessment of harm/damage, and the difference between direct and indirect attribution of blame:
"[Cary Coglianese, a professor of law and political science at the University of Pennsylvania] likens the difference between climate change and the BP oil spill to that between the Covid-19 pandemic and the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001: 'September 11th killed around 3,000 people,' he says. 'We had about that many Covid deaths in the U.S. yesterday alone.' More than 900,000 Americans died from Covid over the past two years, well over 5.5 million worldwide, and those are just the directly attributed deaths. 'We seem to be getting numb to this daily catastrophe,' adds Coglianese."
But, the ultimate point of the article (and the original tweet that stimulated it) is a more immediate understanding of the level of harm that is being committed by what we currently term 'normal behavior:'
"We must not, of course, get numb to either thousands of Covid deaths a day, or to the hundreds of deaths conservatively linked to a BP-spill-size amount of oil that is burned as intended. The links from selling, to burning fossil fuels, to the damages immediately attributable to the resulting emissions, are all too clear. It's high time our laws and courts catch up with that reality."
Take care
David
David Chandler
© Sage Publications, 2020
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Daily Climate Damage Should Feel More Like A Disaster
By Gernot Wagner
February 11, 2022
Bloomberg
