On March 24, 1989, a massive tanker captained by a man who had allegedly been drinking, sailed outside regular Alaskan shipping lanes and hit a reef, causing one of the worst environmental disasters in US history.
The Exxon Valdez, at the time one of the most advanced tankers in the world, split, spilling approximately 40 million liters of crude oil into the delicate and pristine Arctic environment of the remote Prince William Sound.
The oil dispersed over an area of 28,000 km² and covered approximately 2,000km of rugged coastline. It killed an estimated 600,000 to 700,000 birds, fish and sea mammals.
Twenty years later, another horrific accident is waiting to happen, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) warned on Friday, even as the damage from Exxon Valdez continues to blight the region.
In a graphic illustration of the lingering effects of that disaster, the environmental group sent oil-crusted rocks to ministers, officials and media in the Arctic countries still wrangling over arrangements to govern a renewed resource rush to the region.
The rocks accompanied a report titled Lessons Not Learned, which recommends a moratorium on new offshore oil development in the Arctic “until technologies improve to a point where an adequate oil-spill clean-up operation can be performed.”
WWF also recommended that the most vulnerable and important areas of the Arctic be deemed permanently off-limits to oil development because oil spills would be next to impossible to clean up or would cause irreparable long-term damage.
“Governments and industry in the region remain unprepared to deal with another such disaster,” WWF warned. At the same time global warming is melting more of the ice, which increases access and exploration, making another accident more likely.
“While there has been little improvement in technologies to respond to oil-spill disasters in the last 20 years, the Arctic itself has changed considerably and is much more vulnerable today,” said Neil Hamilton, leader of WWF’s Arctic Program.
“Sea ice is disappearing and open water seasons are lasting longer, creating a frenzy to stake claims on the Arctic’s rich resources — especially oil and gas development. We need a ‘time-out’ until protective measures exist for this fragile, special place.”
Bill Chameides, dean of Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment and a member of the National Academy of Sciences, agrees with the WWF that despite one of the largest cleanup efforts in history much of the damage has proved irreversible.
Though many beaches and coves in the area look the same, the deeper picture tells a very different story. Digging even a little uncovers a gooey mix of oil and sand.
“People may assume that because the spill happened 20 years ago, the effects are long gone. But they persist — and may continue for years to come,” said Chameides, who estimates that it could take as much as 100 more years for all the oil to dissipate.
Oil giant Exxon spent about US$2 billion on the cleanup operation.
It was originally ordered to pay US$5 billion in punitive damages. But in a successful series of court appeals culminating in a Supreme Court decision last year, that amount has now been reduced to just over US$507 million — a tremendous blow to the fishermen and local communities who suffered from the calamity.
“Their way of life was devastated,” says local resident Sharon Bushell, the author of a book called, The Spill, Personal Stories From the Exxon Valdez Disaster. She interviewed residents about how they remember the disaster and chronicles the lost lives of the fishermen, innkeepers and mechanics.
“There was death everywhere, dead birds, dead otters, dead deer. A vast amount of oil covered the water,” said one woman. “It was a terrible scene, one to rival anyone’s idea of hell.”
Oct. 27 to Nov. 2 Over a breakfast of soymilk and fried dough costing less than NT$400, seven officials and engineers agreed on a NT$400 million plan — unaware that it would mark the beginning of Taiwan’s semiconductor empire. It was a cold February morning in 1974. Gathered at the unassuming shop were Economics minister Sun Yun-hsuan (孫運璿), director-general of Transportation and Communications Kao Yu-shu (高玉樹), Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) president Wang Chao-chen (王兆振), Telecommunications Laboratories director Kang Pao-huang (康寶煌), Executive Yuan secretary-general Fei Hua (費驊), director-general of Telecommunications Fang Hsien-chi (方賢齊) and Radio Corporation of America (RCA) Laboratories director Pan
The classic warmth of a good old-fashioned izakaya beckons you in, all cozy nooks and dark wood finishes, as tables order a third round and waiters sling tapas-sized bites and assorted — sometimes unidentifiable — skewered meats. But there’s a romantic hush about this Ximending (西門町) hotspot, with cocktails savored, plating elegant and never rushed and daters and diners lit by candlelight and chandelier. Each chair is mismatched and the assorted tables appear to be the fanciest picks from a nearby flea market. A naked sewing mannequin stands in a dimly lit corner, adorned with antique mirrors and draped foliage
The consensus on the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chair race is that Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) ran a populist, ideological back-to-basics campaign and soundly defeated former Taipei mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌), the candidate backed by the big institutional players. Cheng tapped into a wave of popular enthusiasm within the KMT, while the institutional players’ get-out-the-vote abilities fell flat, suggesting their power has weakened significantly. Yet, a closer look at the race paints a more complicated picture, raising questions about some analysts’ conclusions, including my own. TURNOUT Here is a surprising statistic: Turnout was 130,678, or 39.46 percent of the 331,145 eligible party
The election of Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) as chair of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) marked a triumphant return of pride in the “Chinese” in the party name. Cheng wants Taiwanese to be proud to call themselves Chinese again. The unambiguous winner was a return to the KMT ideology that formed in the early 2000s under then chairman Lien Chan (連戰) and president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) put into practice as far as he could, until ultimately thwarted by hundreds of thousands of protestors thronging the streets in what became known as the Sunflower movement in 2014. Cheng is an unambiguous Chinese ethnonationalist,
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