sust-mar: Safe Oil,Dead Fish

Date: Thu, 27 Nov 2003 23:58:28 -0400 (AST)
From: "Michael R. Marshall" <ad760@chebucto.ns.ca>
To: sust-mar@chebucto.ns.ca
Precedence: bulk
Return-Path: <sust-mar-mml-owner@chebucto.ns.ca>

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My access to newspapers is limited to the cast-off ones I scrounge from
work at my part time job, so these two news stories from the November 21st
HERALD might seem a little dated to most of you. I hope the connection I
weave between them isn't...

The first story, on page C3, dealt with a November 20th press conference
called by people worried about the effects on marine life from proposed  
seismic testing for petroleum off the west coast of Cape Breton. The
Petroleum industry, in turn, denied any possibility of harm.

Nothing really new there, I thought,I'v heard both sides on this before. I
went on reading the rest of the paper.

There on page A15 was another story about fish - the release of the report
'The Future of the Fisheries' , with its grim timeline of worldwide near
depletion by 2050. Buried deep in this article from Canadian Press, was
the claim that "..for the first time  (the report's team of scientists)
have linked the availability of cheap oil to the expansion of the world's
fisheries." 

My first reaction was 'Dah', what took them so long? But then I saw the
irony connecting the two news items pages apart.

Let us accept, for the moment, the petroleum industry position that they
can safely -and yet cheaply - explore,test,drill, and transport marine
petroleum ashore without
harming any fish. What happens then?

What happens then is that fish really start dying in serious numbers: in
species-threatening
numbers, thanks to these safe and cheap efforts of the petroleum industry.

Modern progress has assured that Man can kill far more marine life
DELIBERATELY in the commercial fishery than
he does through mis-advertence via other industrial activities.

Cheap oil and low interest rates, those two 'Glories' of the last few
decades, have fueled the purchases of ever-larger
offshore vessels  (and feller-bunchers and ATVs and SUVs) to track down
the
schools of fish once safe in deeper water.

Sigh! Too bad the petroleum industry wasn't unsafe and inefficient and as
a result
only produced expensive oil. At least the deep sea fleets would be out of
business and some fish would have a bit of breathing room.

The Petroleum Industry is killing the world's fish: whether they do it now
by
seismic testing or later when a dragger fills its big tanks with cheap
fuel and heads out to
sea, matters not.

 michael marshall, coordinator, gpcns-news@chebucto.ns.ca
listserv. 




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