Although offshore drilling is essential to extracting crude oil and gas, many fail to realize that its environmental benefits greatly outweigh the economic. Controversy has surrounded the potential drilling off the coast of British Columbia for decades. The David Suzuki Foundation equates the opening up BC’s coastline to drilling with one of the most destructive things on earth,” for it would damage the environment and increase the number of toxic gases. In the past, offshore drilling has strongly contributed to pollution, exterminated sea creatures, and dramatically affected the national economy. What’s to stop those three from occurring again if the British government were to allow offshore drilling?

Even in the initial stages, offshore drilling wreaks havoc in the marine environment. During their surveying and constructing around rig sites to find potential oil reserves, researchers unwittingly send seismic waves into the ground, by using acoustic generators. According to Rose (who’s Rose???), marine life becomes disorientated because these waves, which produce noise pollution, damage their sonar and sometimes lead to their beaching themselves. Seismic wave testing can damage fish with specific acoustic receptors, which they need to avoid predators and catch prey (Bitts). The most obvious problem that the oil drilling process can cause is the contamination of water, especially if an oil spill results, which harms every living animal within its perimeter. The oil weighing down the birds’ wings and covering other marine life most likely will result in Hypothermia (Rose). Not only do oil spills pose a threat to marine life and the number of times it is transported increases those chances to all too real, many studies also show that offshore drilling disrupts the food chain and reproductive cycles of animals. (Wingrove). {<–site more research rather than just saying it} The recent oil spill off the Gulf of Mexico left high concentrations of mercury, chromium, barium, arsenic, cadmium and other heavy metal, all of which are lethal for marine life, causing in imbalance in species(Bitts). Clearly, drilling is a severe risk to the environment and its marine life.

The argument with the most proponents as to why offshore drilling should be avoided off the coast of British Columbia is that doing so would increase pollution in the air and, thus, harm the environment and its people. NDC states that offshore drilling leads to regular oil leakages, minor or major spills, and the discharge of toxic drill cuttings, mud’s and fluids into the ocean (?). Pollution does not only come directly from the source–crude oil–it actively contributes to the progressive epidemic of climate change. The use of oil and oil production has made “significant contributions to global greenhouse gas emissions, increases in carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere and the consequent changes to our climate.”(DSF). In 1969, an oil spill in Santa Barbara, California unleashed 80,000–100,000 barrels of crude oil over a ten day period. Since then, spills explosions and accidents have been occurring everywhere offshore oil rigs have been constructed. Even though technology is superior to the olden days, it fails to prevent oil spills, mainly due to failed equipment, severe weather, and human error. {insert closing statement}

{transition sentence} Because communities located off the coast of British Columbia are greatly dependent on tourism, drilling would bring in work as well as profit. It would create a “few direct jobs for the coastal communities, foreign work crews with the necessary specialized skills would be brought in from around the world. and oil rigs would be constructed where labour is cheapest.”(NDC). That is, drilling won’t necessarily make a large number of jobs available for the locals. Furthermore, a popular tourism site like British Columbia is currently economically vulnerable to the destructive toil of an oil spill. All businesses depending on tourists, such as hotels, would tank in service and profit, just like those after the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico (DSF).

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Peace