Eco-disasters, oil spills hardest on worlds poor

Oil Spill in ocean

Carol Forsloff - Tar sands in Canada, oil drilling in Nigeria and the Gulf Coast, hydraulic fracturing for gas, mountain top removal mining all have consequences that fall heaviest on the poor.

In areas where the poor and minorities live,  the environment is becoming so contaminated and dangerously polluted, it creates unlivable conditions for large populations of ethnic poor and those who work the outdoors in fishing and farming. While the battle rages on the Gulf of Mexico to stop the oil from spewing into the ocean, there are other wars raging against those who stop at nothing to make huge profits at the expense of the most vulnerable of the world.In short, energy exploration and environmental devastation has become a global crisis; but it is fought in a series of skirmishes when it is the battle that has to be won.

These are a few of the major skirmishes.  

Canada's Boreal Forest is an ecosystem with hundreds of unique species of birds and mammals that live within it.  Indigenous human communities, called First Nations of Canada, make their home in the area.  Like the protected lands of the Arctic, the wetlands of the Gulf Coast, the special nature of the environment is risked, according to environmental advocates, by extracting oil from tar sands. This is oil lying several feet underground in a Florida-sized region.  It requires huge inputs of natural gas and water to extract the oil. Scientists have estimated production of oil from tar sands impacts the climate more than three times the production of conventional oil. The consequence has been the growing rate of cancer among the peoples of the First Nations and the pollution of their drinking water.

Mountaintop removal mining is said to have been going on since 1970's as an extension of conventional strip mining and is reported to be growing in use because more coal can be mined with fewer workers.  It is devastating whole sections of Appalachia, a poor region of the United States, as resulting millions of tons of waste rock, dirt, and vegetation are dumped into surrounding valleys, burying miles and miles of streams under piles of rubble hundreds of feet deep after the explosions used to blast mountaintops in order to get to the coal seams.

The oil disaster in Nigeria is described as "much more destructive and long lasting than the Gulf spill."  MSNBC Grio, which relates the stories of Africa explains this, " That's the four decades of oil spills in Nigeria's Niger delta. The spills have wreaked havoc on the crops and livestock, despoiled the land, water and the air, and posed a monumental health hazard to thousands of residents in the region. These spills have been ignored by the oil giants, governments, and sadly many of the world's top environmentalists." The Gulf Coast has a diversified population economically and socially, but the areas most affected to date are in the regions where people work the land and the oceans to make their living, in what some scientists point out could become a devastated wasteland if the present oil disaster is not stopped soon.


Many environmentalists tell us it is time to examine these issues in the context of the destruction of whole populations  in the world as opposed to a series of skirmishes. Environmentally destructive means are used in poor areas to get oil, gas and oil, with seemingly disregard for the indigenous peoples in different areas.  The revelation of these shows there are patterns of problems that known might cause enough public concern  so clean alternatives for energy become an urgent decision.