Spill, baby, spill: Nigeria every year since 1969

Reports on the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico may jar even the jaded, though we'll have to wait to see how the politicos parse this. Climate Progress discusses malfeasance buried in a New York Times article in Shocking allegations against BP.

And via @bldgblog, also from the NYT is A Spill of Our Own, an op-ed by Lisa Margonelli, director of the New America Foundation’s energy initiative and author of Oil on the Brain: Petroleum’s Long, Strange Trip to Your Tank. She says:

"...Nigeria has suffered spills equivalent to that of the Exxon Valdez every year since 1969. (As of last year, Nigeria had 2,000 active spills.) Since the Santa Barbara spill of 1969, and the more than 40 Earth Days that have followed, Americans have increased by two-thirds the amount of petroleum we consume in our cars, while nearly quadrupling the quantity we import. Effectively, we’ve been importing oil and exporting spills to villages and waterways all over the world." [emphasis added]


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Update: All this is especially exasperating for fans of Amory Lovins; see his Moving Past Oil is our Best Opportunity for a Profitable, Clean-Energy Future. See also The High Costs of Offshore Drilling: Deepwater Horizon Underscores Need to Find Sustainable Energy Solutions and Is Obama blowing his best chance to shift the debate from the dirty, unsafe energy of the 19th century to the clean, safe energy of the 21st century?

Here's Lovins' TED talk: