However, the overarching problem is not that the ship's captain was piloting without a map, or that the vessel was a single-hulled heap, or that these ships take shortcuts past one of the most ecologically sensitive areas in the world. These were the immediate causes of the spill, and they need to be addressed. But the ultimate source of the problem is our reliance on oil for so much of our energy needs. Oil and other liquid fossil fuels such as diesel and gasoline are readily portable and pack a powerful energy punch, but they are also toxic. And because we use, store and transport such huge quantities of these fuels, they end up in our air, soil, groundwater, rivers and oceans.
Oil spills occur every day all over the world.
Some are quite large, while others can be as small as a leaky gasket or the little bit that remains in each of the millions of oil containers we discard every year. But it all adds up. Members of a rescue team from the International Fund for Animal Welfare rinse an oiled pelican after it washed ashore on the island of San Cristobal in the Galapagos. Big oil spills can be tremendously damaging to a local area, but they account for only about 5 percent of the oil that leaches into our oceans. Every year, for example, oil tankers, freighters and cruise ships dump millions of gallons of oil through routine exchanges of bilge water and other ship activities.