Panel discusses environmental impact of drilling

John Broder, a Washington, D.C., correspondent for the New York Times, answered a question Wednesday night in Nordy’s Place about what it would take to get people to care about oil drilling and similar issues that negatively affect the environment and the community.

He said that it would take a “cascade of events” like Hurricane Katrina to facilitate change in public opinion. Not just one Katrina, but five.

Fellow panelist John Detwiler gave a more “radical” answer.

“I think there’s going to be an apocalyptic showdown between humans and higher forces,” Detwiler said, speaking of the lack of environmental awareness from certain Americans and companies.

Broder and two other environmental leaders in the area — Detwiler, a Sierra Club representative, and Pitt graduate student Samantha Malone — took turns discussing the environmental impact of oil drilling in front of an audience of about 60 students Wednesday night as a part of the Collegiate Readership Program.

“It was a combination of human and corporate actors rushing to finish this job,” Broder said in reference to the cause behind the BP oil spill that leaked 170 million gallons of oil in the Gulf of Mexico.

Broder said he isn’t an engineer or an environmental science expert, but that he did cover the entire oil spill story in the South. He said that’s how he learned about the topic — by “doing.”

“A complicated system fails in complicated ways,” Broder said as an explanation of exactly how humans were responsible for what went wrong to cause the oil spill. “The blowout preventer failed. It wasn’t designed to operate under that kind of pressure.”

A blowout preventer is a large, specialized valve used to seal, monitor and control oil and gas wells.

Fellow panelist Malone spoke about the negative consequences of drilling in coastal fishing towns located in Ghana, a country in Africa she studied as part of an environmental program.

She said that the drilling has many impacts similar to the Marcellus Shale drilling in the United States.

“Gas not properly burned produces methane, there are air-quality issues, and noise drove off the fish,” Malone said.

Sierra Club representative Detwiler agreed with his fellow panelists and said that we cannot survive by burning only the energy we already have.

“We don’t need any more information,” Detwiler said. “The issue is whether we’re going to act on what we already know.”

Michelle Mancuso, a junior environmental studies major, said she attended the event because she wants to become a part of the discussion regarding oil drilling’s environmental impact.

“I feel like it’s an issue not enough people are willing to talk about,” Mancuso said.

Mancuso said Marcellus Shale personally affects her southwestern Pennsylvania hometown.

“There are changes in the natural landscape. The trees are gone,” Mancuso said. “It’s ugly now.”

Broder said that we’re dealing with causes and effects that need action on a global scale, but there are things students can be aware of.

“Be mindful of waste, how you use petroleum products,” said Broder. “Don’t expect the oil companies to give up.”