Stop the next Deepwater Horizon-sized oil spill
People make mistakes; machines fail. So when our oceans are drilled for oil, catastrophes like Deepwater Horizon are just accidents waiting to happen.
Offshore drilling is just too risky.
It took just one accident for over 3 million barrels of oil to start flowing into the Gulf of Mexico, smothering and killing untold numbers of innocent creatures and transforming hundreds of square miles of ocean habitat.1
The Deepwater disaster taught us that even one oil spill can exact an unbearable toll on our environment. But Trump administration plans would reverse restrictions put in place after Deepwater and open up the Atlantic and Pacific coasts to offshore drilling.
We can’t let that happen — and the House of Representatives agrees. Last year, the House passed a bill to stop the plan — now we need the Senate to act.
Oil spills are a catastrophe for wildlife.
From the moment the oil started spilling on that day in April 2010, wildlife in the Gulf started to suffer. Otters, their fur coated in oil, lost the ability to insulate themselves and perished from hypothermia. Kemp’s ridley sea turtles became mired in oil and died of organ failure and exhaustion.2
When it was all over, hundreds of thousands of turtles and seabirds were dead. Area bottlenose dolphins suffered birth defects for years after the spill, and suffered a 50 percent decline in their population. The surrounding ecosystems have not recovered, and some may never fully recover.3
Take action to stop offshore drilling.
The House of Representatives passed a bill that would stop the Trump administration’s plan to open up nearly the entire Pacific and Atlantic coasts to drilling.
But the bill is tied up in the Senate, and if senators don’t hear from their constituents, they’re not likely to take action.
We have a chance to stop another irreversible drilling catastrophe before it happens. Tell your senators to protect our coasts and oceans and support an offshore drilling ban.
- “Gulf Oil Spill,” Smithsonian Ocean, accessed September 26, 2019.
- “Effects of Oil on Wildlife,” U.C. Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, last accessed October 23, 2019.
- “Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill: Longterm Effects on Marine Mammals, Sea Turtles,” National Ocean Service, April 20, 2017.