Killer Spill!!
Epitaph for an oily grave!
It’s the murder of innocents in a vendetta mission gone awry. Bombing of and the subsequent oil spill from the Jiyeh power station may not have killed as many people, but the 10 cm thick carpet of heavy fuel is likely to cause permanent irreversible damage to life along the Lebanese coast. ‘Wars are the only way of setting fire to the spirits of people’, but the no-holds-barred philosophy of modern day warfare is setting to fire more than mere spirit. Fortunately however, for a planet clutching at straws, June this year saw the genial Jekyll getting the better of the abominable Hyde in George Bush when he, to the delight of environmentalists and nature lovers across the world, gave the green signal to the protection of Northwestern Hawaiian Islands (NWHI) – the most intact tropical marine ecosystems under US jurisdiction. But the fact remains that the rate at which our natural resources are being exploited, the American President’s token benediction is but a little drop of Lourdes Water in an ocean of pollution. The grim effects of the deadly trail of oil spills from the 1991 Gulf War are felt even today. The waters of the Persian Gulf choked of all life, its surface strewn with dying fish gasping and thousands of birds and marine mammals embalmed in the thick, black poison is a sight difficult to erase from the mind’s eye. While the environment always is a ‘forgotten last’ in every list – way below lives, limbs and livelihoods – the world needs to realise that the obvious ramifications of such collateral damage would haunt generations of lives, human and marine, contaminating food chains, coastlines and bloodlines, the effects of which shall linger long after the last echo of the last explosion. Stray bombs notwithstanding, every year thousands of tons of fuel is released into the sea by way of pipeline leakage, ship wrecks, routine car and ship maintenance, and off shore oil drillings. The world needs to commit itself as much to the cause of our oceans drowning in oil as it does to the cause of humanity cowering in terror. And while we’re at it, let’s just hope that the world has had its share of war thrills... and well, oil spills!!
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Editor: Arindam Chaudhuri; Source: B&E and IIPM Publication
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posted by IIPM at
11:57 AM
