The Santa Barbara Maritime Museum is pleased to host The Spill’s Broad Reach Panel Discussion, designed to address some of the issues arising from the 1969 Santa Barbara Channel oil blowout that sparked a larger national discussion and environmental movement. Panelists will include members of local environmental organizations and the oil industry.
Dick Smith and Santa Barbara News-Press
The spill’s broad reach
As Keith C. Clark and Jeffrey J. Hemphill of UC Santa Barbara’s Geography Department wrote in The Santa Barbara Oil Spill: A Retrospective, “Now, after 33 years, and as memories fade, the impacts of the post-spill consequences for environmental policy outweigh historically the physical impacts of the spill itself. Yet the oil industry and coastal environments remain in a state of uneasy coexistence.”
Topics and issues for the panel discussion include, but are not limited to: local preparedness, the extent of scientific research published and how well we understand the risks and effects ocean drilling has on the environment, alternative, renewable energy sources, regulation compliance, and common ground environmentalists and the oil industry can find as we move forward.
After the Santa Barbara disaster, activism quickly spread across the country and spawned landmark legislation, the first Earth Day, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Air and Water Act, and the environmental Studies major at UCSB.
The Santa Barbara Maritime Museum will also tell this story in the new permanent exhibit, The Spill’s Broad Reach. Featuring selections from Paul Lynch’s documentary short Birth of a Movement, relating to the 1969 oil spill and resulting activism, the exhibit captures Santa Barbara’s unique role in shaping modern environmental movements.
The Spill’s Broad Reach, Panel Discussion, Thursday, June 16, 2011, 7:00pm, SBMM Members Free, $5 Non-members
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The physical effects of the spill have not finished manifesting themselves, and the chain of life likely suffers in ways not yet completely understood. This event is sure to be a propaganda-fest with the oil companies and their loyal enviro-sellouts cheering rah rah rah even as we ignore the white mammoth in the room; rising sea levels, unprecedented storms, flooding on the Ohio and mississippi, trillions borrowed and spent on oil-related wars, species extinction, air pollution and asthma, and the Gulf spill that has been and the Gulf spills yet to come. With electric cars and solar power waiting in the wings, this nonsensical dog and pony show will hopefully be one of the last such 'panel discussions' we shall have to endure.
Joey Racano, Director
Ocean Outfall Group
www.oceanoutfallgroup.com
spiritpen (anonymous profile)
May 25, 2011 at 9:30 p.m. (Suggest removal)