News from a Changing Planet -- This Week on Earth #21
How California's oil rigs became biodiversity hubs, not panicking, and the irresponsibility of Republican-held Congress and Supreme Court.
WHAT DO OIL RIGS AND ROCKY REEFS HAVE IN COMMON? They’re both biodiversity hotspots in the ocean. But is one kind better the other? (The Guardian)
It’s easy to forget, standing on the beach in Santa Barbara (where great white sharks and dolphins play in the surf and pelicans circle overhead) that one of the foundational catalysts for the modern environmental movement happened here: in 1969, an oil rig six miles from shore had a blowout, and an area of ocean the size of Chicago was covered in oil, in one of the most biodiverse areas in the world.
Today you can still see ghostly oil rigs through the silver haze from the beach in Santa Barbara (as I did on a recent visit), though only 15 of the 27 rigs are still operational. But both the active and inactive ones have a second life: over time, they have become hotspots for ocean life, acting like rocky reefs and attracting mussels and barnacles, which themselves attract fish and sea lions that can then feed and find shelter there.
So I loved this story in The Guardian about these oil platforms, and the “debate” over their future: as relics (or soon-to-be relics) of fossil fuel infrastructure, should they be destroyed as blights on the seascape, or should their value as “accidental oases” be recognized and preserved?
This is one of the knotty but essential questions that we will have to figure out good answers to in the future: what kind of trade-offs are we willing to accept, and how do we preserve biodiversity in an industrialized world?
On the one hand: “According to a 2014 study, the rigs were some of the most “productive” ocean habitats in the world, a term that refers to biomass – or number of fish and other creatures and how much space they take up – per unit area. The research showed the rigs to be about 27 times more productive than the natural rocky reefs in California.”
On the other hand: environmental groups “cite the visual pollution of rigs on the ocean horizon and say that the plan lets fossil fuel companies escape paying for the end of life of their dirty products.” One non-profit chief said “her group’s preference would be to have ‘as clean an environment at sea as possible’, adding that full removal would allow the ecosystem to return to its original function.”
But to one of the scientists in this story, it’s less about the way that the life got there, and the fact that it’s now there: “It just pisses me off, the hypocrisy of environmental groups who say: ‘Yeah, we’re all for biodiversity, except on artificial stuff, and then they can all die,’” he said. “It drives me insane.”
THE HEADLINES WANT YOU TO PANIC. DON’T PANIC: Try doing something productive instead (like voting in Tuesday’s election). (Talking Climate with Katharine Hayhoe)
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