Image provided by Aquarium of the Pacific study, credited to eoearth.org
4:46pm | A study produced by the Aquarium of the Pacific and leaders in environmental research reviewed the massive 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill and determined that the accident was avoidable, that there is low risk of something similar occurring in California and also advised strategies to ween Americans off of a foreign oil dependence.
Entitled After The Gulf, What Did We Learn?, the 65-page study was released by the aquarium today.
The study is the result of a two-day conference in October that brought together some of the leading minds in offshore oil and gas, economics, renewable energy, environmental impacts, the Ocean Pollution Act and members of the U.S. Coast Guard who were involved in the Gulf clean-up. They tackled tough issues such as what it will take to prevent similar accidents, and strategies for responding more effectively.
“We chose to focus on prevention and response rather than environmental effects because numerous meetings are focusing on assessing environmental impacts and relatively few on prevention,” said aquarium President & CEO Dr. Jerry R. Schubel.
The study also addressed the severity of climate change.
“It’s urgent to take action to strongly reduce global greenhouse gas emissions, not for
ideological, political, or economic reasons, but for scientific reasons,” wrote Professor Richard C. J. Somerville from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego. Somerville wrote the portion of the study concerning rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Click here to download the full report. More to come…