Regardless of the facts, promoters of expanded offshore drilling along the coasts of the United States keep on claiming that oil spills almost never happen. They’re counting on people not doing their own research into the matter. They’re counting on their claims being taken on faith.
Take a quick look at international news in any given week, however, and you’ll find news of oil spills polluting reefs and beaches, rivers and seas. Today, for example, while the blazing offshore drilling platform in the Timor Sea finally captures some global attention, news of another oil spill is coming from China, where a freighter has run aground at the mouth of the Yangtze River.
That’s in addition to the new oil spill in the mouth of the Mississippi River and the oil spill in San Francisco Bay, and the oil spill near Charleston, and the one near Galveston, and the one off the coast of India, and the one… you get the picture. For something that’s supposed to almost never happen, oil spills sure happen a lot.
