When Civilization Ran Aground Aboard the Oil Tanker in Alaska

I live on the Northwest Pacific coast. Although Prince William Sound is hundreds of miles away, its oil-covered waters now seem perilously close. Sister tankers to the Exxon Valdez have passed here daily for 12 years, hidden just beyond the horizon. Until last week I rarely gave them a thought.

My surroundings are much like those near Cordova and the other Prince William Sound communities: forested mountains rising sheer above islands and bays; violent Pacific storms shrouding the coast in clouds and rain; the land and waters filled with a staggering abundance of life.

At this time of year, herring mass to spawn along the shores and fingerling salmon pour out from rivers and hatchery pens. Drawn by the abundant feed are humpback whales, sea lions, spotted seals, killer whales, harbor porpoises and thousands of sea birds--gulls, ducks, cormorants, kittiwakes, auklets, murres, murrelets, grebes, loons and bald eagles. There are few places on earth where nature remains so pristine and exuberant.

This was true of Prince William Sound until this year. Like other Americans, my neighbors and I have watched the tragedy unfold on nightly newscasts: the oil slick covering 30 square miles, 100, 200, 500, then 1,000 square miles, sludge pluming into the open Pacific, heading toward Kenai Fjords National Park and the rich waters of Cook Inlet.

Most of us living along this coast are fishermen of one sort or another--commercial, sport or subsistence. What corn and wheat are to Midwestern farmers, salmon and halibut are to people here. Now, with brutal suddenness, the residents of Prince William Sound face the equivalent of a year in farm country without a drop of rain; and worse, the possibility that many more will follow.

In a state often deeply divided over environmental issues, an uncommon unity of opinion has emerged. Alaskan editorial pages and radio talk shows are filled with grief and indignation. Blame is assigned first to an arrogant and unprepared oil industry, then to an ineffective and unresponsive government and then to a more tangible scapegoat--the captain who tested legally drunk after his tanker struck Bligh Reef.

In 1969, I was living in Santa Barbara when the first great American oil spill came ashore. Like thousands of others, I walked the blackened beaches and clambered across lathered rocks, an act of curiosity but also of conscience, as if simply being there and showing concern might help.

And then I found a bird, hiding among kelp and boulders just above the tide. A western grebe, big as a mallard, long-necked, with a slender needle beak, half-submerged in a puddle of mixed oil and water.

I have forgotten how much it cost to clean up the spill in Santa Barbara Channel, how those who suffered damages were compensated, how blame was decided, how punishment was administered, how many animals were calculated to have died and how many were saved. But one memory holds forever--that dying bird, feathers matted and shining with oil, wings drooped, body quivering.

She stared up at me, blinking bright red eyes, the one part that still seemed fully alive. Caught in the bird’s unwavering gaze, I could not escape my own feelings of guilt.

Now it has happened again, and far worse this time, on a wilderness coast populated with incalculable numbers of fish, sea birds, mammals and a diverse array of other marine life. Each day I am haunted by images of birds setting their wings to land in the morass of crude. And I think of sea otters, those clever and energetic creatures who add such brightness to my days, crawling out to drape themselves on oil-soaked rocks and await a slow death. Prince William Sound has become a dying grounds, filled with thousands of animals, each one another story like the doomed grebe I found 20 years ago.

Now, arguments over who is responsible shift from the courts of public opinion to the courts of law. By assigning blame we may find satisfaction. But will the legal process identify who is truly guilty? I think not.

Responsibility for the Prince William Sound disaster rests not just on oil companies, not just on government, not just on an intoxicated ship captain. Ultimately, you and I must accept our share of blame--as members of a society that understood the risks and judged them acceptable. A society that valued convenience and monetary gain above the security of its own environment. A society that placed nature outside the sphere of ethical concern and moral restraint. We belong to a society much like the tanker in Prince William Sound, laden with an enormous deadly cargo, making its way through treacherous waters with impaired judgment at the helm.

And who will pay for the Prince William Sound disaster? You and I. We will cover the cost to government when we pay taxes. We will cover the cost to the oil industry when we buy fuel or anything made with petroleum products. The notion that someone else will pay is an illusion.

There is yet another cost to us, one far greater and more consequential. The natural world of Prince William Sound is not just scenery; it is a vital part of our continent’s living community, a community that supplies the air we breathe and the food we eat. Any wound to that community diminishes the environment we depend upon for every moment of our lives, takes away from its capacity to sustain us, whether we live near the disaster or far away. As we learn more about the connections among all things, we realize that damage in one place is damage to the environment everywhere. We are a part of what we have destroyed.

An environmental officer for the Exxon Corp. asserted that the Alaskan oil spill is “the price of civilization.” What we have lost may never be regained. As a society, we must agree that we will no longer accept this price. Never again.

I choose those words deliberately. The enslavement and extermination of racial and ethnic groups in Europe and America is a deep stain on our collective memory. Behavior our society once condoned has now literally become unthinkable. Abraham Lincoln said, “If slavery is not wrong, then nothing is wrong.”

Lincoln’s plea for a moral conscience that embraces all peoples eventually became the law and practice of our land. We must now recognize the need for a further growth of moral conscience, to encompass the whole community of life--the environment that nurtures, uplifts senses and sustains our existence.

Future generations will look back on our behavior toward the environment--the enslavement and extermination of species who share the world with us--and judge it unthinkable.