Dear EarthTalk: Is it true that the BP oil leak is much more of an environmental threat than previous spills from tankers, and if so why? -- Nathan Gore, Pawtucket, RI

No one knows for sure how the ongoing oil catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico will affect the deep sea ecosystem, but scientists are not optimistic. Oil from what is now considered the nation’s second largest spill, 1989’s Exxon Valdez mishap, slicked 11,000 square miles of ocean surface and 1,300 miles of pristine Alaskan coastline while killing hundreds of thousands of birds and marine mammals and untold numbers of fish and fish eggs. But the impacts of the ongoing Deepwater Horizon leak in the Gulf may be far worse given that much of the loose oil is actually in the water column, not on the surface. In fact, researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) recently detected huge deepwater plumes of dispersed oil up to 30 miles long, seven miles wide and hundreds of feet thick.

Workers clean off an oil-soaked pelican at the International Bird Rescue Center in Louisiana.

Why would an undersea spill be worse? One outcome could be the expansion in size and extension in time of a seasonal “dead zone” that already plagues the Gulf of Mexico as a result of industrial pollutants and agricultural run-off from the Mississippi River. While huge Gulf of Mexico algae blooms help to naturally clean up the Midwest’s factory emissions and wasted fertilizer, such a process doesn’t come without a cost to the ecosystem. Every spring, in a condition known as hypoxia, this fast growing algae depletes large sections of the Gulf's water column of the oxygen crucial for other life forms to survive there. The BP oil spill is likely to exacerbate this problem, as natural oil-eating microbes swarming over undersea oil plumes could cause or add to hypoxic conditions in otherwise teeming swaths of the Gulf.

According to NOAA researcher Samantha Joye, the undersea oil poses a direct threat to large marine wildlife, such as fish, sharks and cetaceans, and also to the tiny stuff, including zooplankton, shrimp, corals, crabs and worms. By endangering these latter populations, the foundation of the marine food chain, the oil could have chronic long-term effects on the wider Gulf ecosystem, including the industries—more shrimp and oysters come from the Gulf than anywhere else in the world—that rely on them.

Another worry is how the chemical dispersants being used to break up the undersea oil will impact the Gulf's ecosystems and inhabitants. The dispersant’s ingredients are a trade secret closely held by the company that makes it, and therefore have not been vetted by marine biologists to determine their safety for use in such a large application. It also remains to be seen what impact the tiny oil droplets left in the dispersant's wake will have. It could actually be worse for the undersea environment to break the oil up into tiny droplets (which is done to try to make it easier for microbes to digest them).

Beyond all these undersea environmental effects, the oil is also starting to wash up into coastal wetlands already besieged by over-development, pollution and the lingering effects of Hurricane Katrina. If there can be any silver lining to this catastrophe, it may be that it is the wake-up call we’ve needed to start moving more rapidly away from fossil fuels to a clean, renewable energy future. For starters, we can all begin to reduce our own oil consumption and opt for clean and green energy sources whenever possible.

Photo: Lorna Baldwin, PBS NewsHour, Courtesy Flickr.

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It’s official: the oil spill that began in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20^th is now the largest in American history, surpassing the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989.  Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) observed that "the recovery from the Exxon Valdez oil spill was long and sad, and it took 20 years for litigation over punitive damages to be resolved....That in and of itself was a tragedy we can't let happen again."

When news of the Exxon Valdez oil spill broke in March of 1989, the slow and inadequate corporate and government response to the disaster ushered in a new wave of leaders in the environmental movement.  One of these new visionary leaders was the late Joan Bavaria, the driving force behind the Boston-based CERES, which was founded in 1989 to advance what was then viewed as a sweeping 10-point code of environmental conduct that became known as the CERES Principles.

In ancient Rome Ceres is the goddess of agriculture, charged with guarding humankind's survival.  In the wake of the Exxon Valdez disaster, Joan Bavaria and the CERES team began to build a movement to do just that by creating a new way to hold companies to higher environmental performance and disclosure standards and to provide market based incentives to spur innovation and environmental leadership.  Joan worked tirelessly to build a first-of-its-kind multi-stakeholder coalition comprising environmental organizations, corporations, faith-based institutions and institutional investors all working to find new collaborative solutions.

It was not an easy task in the early 1990's to bring corporate CEOs and leaders in the environmental movement together.  At the time of the Exxon Valdez spill, a spokesman for Exxon said that the CERES Principles "do not recognize the need to balance environmental protection with the importance of adequate energy resources and a stable, healthy economy."

Five years later another oil company, Sun Oil, had an entirely different view on this when it broke ranks with the Fortune 500 and surprised everyone to become the first large company to join with CERES.  The CEO of Sunoco, Robert Campbell, said at the time that his company and members of CERES developed trust for each other and realized that their goals were similar. "Their goal and our goal did not seem so far apart," Campbell said. "The Sun Company decided that by signing the CERES principles they would be placing themselves at the forefront of business' role in protecting the environment."   Bob Campbell displayed true leadership and willingness to ignore pressure from his CEO counterparts, who at the time were angry at him for joining with environmentalists.

CERES continues to play an important role and is focusing on steering investor assets toward companies demonstrating a commitment to sustainability and improved environmental performance and away from more risky laggards.  The original reporting framework CERES designed in the early 1990's evolved into the Global Reporting Initiative, the de facto standard for corporate disclosure of sustainability information used by 1,500 companies worldwide.

New initiatives are emerging today to tackle the new paradigm and the hard choices associated with our addiction to oil.  Earthster, for example, allows companies to quickly assess the environmental impacts of thousands of household products.  And consumers now have a new resource in Good Guide that rates over 75,000 products on environmental performance.    These innovations and others all mark the beginning of a new era of radical transparency where the power is shifting from producer to consumer, as new information and resources become available to separate companies that are truly green from those that greenwash.

The Future for BP

BP's CEO Tony Hayward has pledged  "to clean up every drop of oil" off the oil-soaked shore and to put the "Gulf coast right as fast as we can."   Since April 20th, BP has spent over $800 million responding to the spill.  BP's stock price has dropped over 25% during this period, eroding nearly $25 billion in market value.

More trouble lies ahead for BP as it may face the specter of EPA fines of $1,100 per gallon or up to $4,300 if gross negligence was found to cause the spill.  The total costs for BP could exceed by some estimates over $25 billion, far eclipsing the $3.8 billion costs for the Exxon Valdez spill.

How BP handles these costs will be a true measure of the company.  BP has come under fire for its early handling of the financial settlements from individuals.  Alabama's Attorney General Troy King  has said he told BP to stop encouraging settlement agreements among coastal residents that he said stripped people of their right to sue in exchange for a $5,000 settlement.  Furthermore, CEO Hayward recently was quoted in The Times of London repeating his commitment to pay all verifiable individual claims but qualified his statement further by saying that because "this is America" many of the claims will likely be "illegitimate." Instead of hedging and dodging, BP would be well served to take the high road on settlement issues and learn from the lessons of Exxon

On the wall of Bavaria's cluttered Boston office was a sign that read:   “Life is a test. It is only a test. If this were your real life, you would have been given better instructions.” She was put to the test in 1990 as she visited Prince William Sound on the first anniversary of the Valdez spill and wrote: ''The extent of the damage is still disputed and probably will be forever.  But one thing was crystal clear: such disasters need not happen, they must not happen, and we must not let time heal this wound so well that we forget the tears, the tragedy, and bet again on luck to pull us through.''  This message rings as true today as it did in 1989. While the tragedy of the Gulf oil spill itself cannot be undone, let’s hope that Mr. Hayward is prepared to follow through on his original commitments and follow Joan's advice of 21 years ago as he deals with the aftermath of clean-up and compensation.

Mark Tulay worked for Joan Bavaria at Boston-based CERES as the organization's first full-time employee beginning in the 1990's.  He has worked in the environmental movement for over 15 years and is the Founder and CEO of Sustainability Risk Advisors, a consulting firm that advises non-profit organizations and institutional investors on sustainability related issues.

Corporate sustainability initiatives frequently – and often deservedly – get criticized for being more talk than action.  Integrating environmental and social challenges into the business process can be a daunting task for even well-intentioned and well-resourced enterprises.

A major new 84-page paper from Ceres, the investor and environmental group, seeks to address that issue by laying out an ambitious and detailed program with 20 expectations for companies to focus on and achieve by 2020.  The 21^st Century Corporation: The Ceres Roadmap for Sustainability “is a guide to companies on their journey to comprehensive sustainability – from the boardroom to the copy room – and throughout the supply chain,” says Mindy S. Lubber, President of Ceres.

The paper says companies must cut greenhouse gas emissions 25 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 in order to meet reductions called for by scientists who warn of catastrophic global warming.  The paper also calls on companies to respond to societal issues. “It has become clear that it is not acceptable anywhere in the world to produce goods in unsafe or exploitative conditions,” Ceres says. “These are real business risks for global companies.”

Four Areas for Focus

To accomplish that, Ceres describes its vision of corporate best practices “that must come to represent the norm, not the exception.”  The paper focuses on four broad areas: governance, stakeholder engagement, disclosure and performance.

In governance, “there is a growing expectation that boards of directors as fiduciaries should be informed leaders on sustainability issues that materially impact corporate performance and plans,” the paper says.  Ceres suggests that a board committee have clear accountability for sustainability strategy and performance; that board nominating committees seek directors with expertise in sustainability; and that directors receive regular training in key sustainability issues.

In stakeholder engagement, the roadmap calls for companies to “regularly engage in robust dialogue with stakeholders across the whole value chain.”  Recommendations include adoption of a “stakeholder mapping” process to identify, understand and track key stakeholder groups and how they are engaged on sustainability issues by key business units.

Companies should report regularly on their sustainability strategy and performance, according to the suggested roadmap.  “Disclosure will include credible, standardized, independently verified metrics encompassing all material stakeholder concerns, and detail goals and plans for future action,” the paper says.

In operations, the Ceres roadmap calls on companies to “invest the necessary resources to achieve environmental neutrality and to demonstrate respect for human rights in their operations.”  Performance should be measured “related to GHG emissions, energy efficiency, facilities and building, water, waste, and human rights.”

Sustainability as Economic Driver

In an introduction to the paper, David Blood, Senior Partner of Generation Investment Management, writes: “The interests of shareholders, over time, will best be served by companies that maximize their financial performance by strategically managing their economic, social, environmental and ethical performance.  Central to this thesis is the explicit recognition that sustainable solutions will be the primary driver of industrial and economic development in the coming decades.”

Ceres has proven effective in the past in turning talk about environmental and social change into substance.   The organization started with the so-called Ceres Principles, a 10-point code of corporate environmental conduct drafted in response to the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill.  It launched the Global Reporting Initiative in 1997 and helped GRI organize as an independent organization.

Ceres also directs the Investor Network on Climate Risk, a network of 80 institutional investors with a collective $8 trillion in assets.  The coalition was instrumental in pressuring the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to recently announce new guidance on climate risk disclosure for publicly-held companies.

This Borrowed Earth: Lessons from the 15 Worst Environmental Disasters around the World

Reviewed by Michael Connor

Naysayers on climate change and global warming have a point: no one can predict with certainty what the future holds.  And so, despite evidence compiled by some of the best scientists on the planet, they weave conspiracy theories and argue for non-action.

The same pattern frequently emerges in discussions about environmental safety, with the naysayers arguing that immediate risks to health are exaggerated while the cost of protecting against unforeseen calamity is usually too great.  Besides, economic development will suffer, they suggest.

But what lessons does history provide?  Massive mercury poisoning in Minamata, Japan in the 1950s.  A dioxin-laced explosion at a chemical plant in Seveso, Italy, in the 1976.  And an explosion at a Union Carbide factory in Bhopal, India, which killed thousands in 1984.

Those are but a few examples – there are more, right up to the present day.  And Robert Emmet Hernan provides a frightening catalog of detail about each of them in his new book, This Borrowed Earth: Lessons from the 15 Worst Environmental Disasters around the World. Hernan’s message is simple:  “If we forget how and why these disasters happened and what horrible consequences emerged from them, we will not avert future disasters.”

This Borrowed Earth will serve as a valuable textbook for a generation of environmentally-conscious young people who were not yet born when Chernobyl and Exxon Valdez dominated headlines.  Unfortunately, they will discover that a disturbing pattern emerges in far too many of these cases: a preference for profit over human safety; a willingness to ignore early warning signs of trouble; lies and cover-up; and, oftentimes, a denial of the suffering caused.

A former environmental attorney for New York State who worked on the infamous Love Canal toxic dump case in Niagara Falls, New York, Hernan concludes that what’s needed to address the issue of global warming is political will. “We need leaders who are capable of imagining the consequences of global climate change, and who can identify those who will suffer in the future,” he writes, “including our children, our grandchildren, and their descendants.”