The holiday of Earth Day was inspired by a 1969 oil spill in Santa Barbara, California. In that catastrophic and well-known oil spill, between 3.5 and 4.2 million gallons of crude oil were spilled into the Santa Barbara Channel. The very next year, the first Earth Day was hosted to raise awareness for this event, as well as spark more support and visibility for the growing environmentalism movement.
Since that initial oil spill, between 1969 and 2017 there have been 44 more oil spills in North America, every single one of them over more than 420,000 gallons, according to the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration. That means that since the initial 3.5-4.2 million gallon oil spill that caused Earth Day, at the very least 18.48 million gallons of oil have been spilled, and that’s a low estimate that excludes the past 5 years, which have seen a large uptick in oil spills.
Hopefully, we can muster up a renewed interest in taking down oil companies within the environmentalism movement, and ensure a healthy future for the ocean for us and the generations that come after us.
Sources:
https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/california-spill-52-years-historic-oil-disaster-80400250
https://response.restoration.noaa.gov/oil-and-chemical-spills/oil-spills/largest-oil-spills-affecting-us-waters-1969.html
I really enjoyed reading this. I like the approach you took to this blog theme. I didn’t know how detrimental oil companies have been. Thank you for the insight into how earth day came to be.
Interesting point about the oil companies and there effects on the earth.
Oil spills are probably the most visible argument against the oil industry. It doesn’t look good when animals and other organisms are covered in black goo.
How much is the 18 million gallons spilled compared to the entire volume of the ocean?