So Why Are We Still Siding with Slippery Oil?
In the past months, the COVID-19 pandemic has reportedly made for record growth in terms of renewable energy capacity, and solar energy, as well as wind energy, are expected to be at the forefront of this movement by 2025.
In fact, in Nova Scotia, advancements are being made in renewable energy, specifically by exploring the use of the ocean’s tidal waves.
Despite such ecological and lucrative prospects, the oil industry continues to hold power on the global political and economic scale. Between a recent scandal on Twitter involving Shell asking about what average citizens plan to do to help resolve the climate crisis and a classmate of mine confidently saying that he hopes Trump wins the election because he invested in oil, I can’t help but wonder if people really are this tone-deaf. Alas, they really do seem to be.
As of recently, a slanting boat known as The Nabarima carrying 1.3 million barrels of crude oil between Venezuela, Trinidad and Tobago has been the source of anxiety, lest an ecological disaster occurs, which would put the entire Southern Caribbean in jeopardy.
With hurricane season approaching, if something were to happen here, the impacts of the spill would rival those of the 1989 Exxon Valdex spill and the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon.
In a video showing the state of the ship itself, Gary Aboud, an environmental group known as Fishermen and Friends of the Sea, speaks on the topic:
“There aren’t false images! Nobody is doing anything! […] If something goes on, if something goes wrong, there [are] a number of circumstances that can cause the vessel to flip.”
Since the ship was abandoned in 2019 due to economic sanctions from the US, there have reportedly been leaks on the ship since August, and activists’ complaints to the government have fallen on deaf ears since September, endangering the livelihoods of 50 000 fishermen, not to mention the lives of the numerous species living in the area.
All that to say, there is no reason for us to stick to siding with that slippery oil.
By Mel Spiridigliozzi
