If it all feels eerily familiar…well, it is. Part of the painful irony of the Deepwater Horizon spill is that another oil spill played a key role in goosing the original Earth Day into existence.
On January 29, 1969, a Union Oil drilling rig located six miles off the coast of Santa Barbara, California, suffered a similar natural gas "blowout." Unlike BP, however, Union Oil was able to cap the blowout quickly (because they weren't working in 'outer space'). Unfortunately, high pressure in the oil field caused ruptures in the ocean floor, causing 200,000 gallons of crude to leak into the ocean, whose currents quickly spread thick, oily tar across miles of pristine southern California beaches (the BP spill, in comparison, leaked 200,000 gallons of oil in only a few hours). After eleven frenetic days, Union Oil stopped the leak. But the damage had been done.
Seabirds were especially hard hit – approximately 3600 died as a consequence of the spill. Worse for Union Oil, images of dead birds, seals, and dolphins were repeatedly played on television sets across the nation, causing a storm of outrage. People burned Union Oil credit cards, boycotted their gas stations, and gathered 100,000 signatures on a petition that called for a ban on off-shore oil drilling. "I am amazed at the publicity for the loss of a few
And this from President Richard Nixon: "The Santa Barbara incident has frankly touched the conscience of the American people."
As if on cue, a few months later the highly polluted Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, Ohio, burst into flames.
The following spring, Earth Day rocked the nation.
A blizzard of landmark federal legislation followed in the wake of these events, including the National Environmental Policy Act (1970), an extension of the Clean Air Act (1970), the Clean Water Act (1972), the Endangered Species Act (1973), and the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, all signed into law by President Nixon.
In a speech in 1970, Nixon told the nation "The great question… is, shall we make our peace with nature and begin to make reparations for the damage we have done to our air, our land and our water? Restoring nature to its natural state is a cause beyond party and beyond factions.… It is a cause of particular concern to young Americans – because they more than we will reap the grim consequences of our failure to act on programs which are needed now if we are to prevent disaster later…"
Nixon continued: "The argument is increasingly heard that a fundamental contradiction has arisen between economic growth and the quality of life, so that to have one we must forsake the other. The answer is not to abandon growth, but to redirect it…
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