There's something really depressing about the debate over whether it would have been better to fight BP's oil spill with or without the aid of chemical dispersants.
Everybody agrees that the oil is toxic and everybody agrees that the dispersants are toxic; the disagreement is over whether it's better to mix the two of them together, or just leave dispersants out of the picture entirely.
At it's heart, this is a question that can be resolved empirically, but given that BP's wanted to use dispersants at least in part for PR reasons (less oil on the surface would mean less enduring negative imagery for BP), it is only natural that many people would be reluctant to believe any research showing that oil mixed with dispersants is less bad (or at least not any worse) than oil on its own.
The theory in favor of dispersants is that they break the oil into tiny droplets that are more easily consumed by oil-eating bacteria and that less oil therefore reaches land. The theory against dispersants acknowledges that dispersants break up the oil, but holds that breaking up the oil with another toxic substance poses a grave danger to the food chain in the ocean because the tiny droplets can infest larvae at the bottom of that chain.
Prior to BP's disaster, we didn't really know much at all about how dispersants would work in an undersea environment and to a large degree, we still don't know what their long-term impacts will be. During the leak, BP was very aggressive in its desire to use as much dispersant as possible, and the government was much more reluctant, but neither side really knew what they were doing. Obviously, in such a scenario, you'd like to think that the government would win out, so it was very disturbing to learn from Ed Markey that BP habitually sought and received exemptions to restrictions on the use of dispersants.
At the same time, despite fears that dispersants were making a bad situation worse, I don't think we can say definitively that anybody knew that they were making a bad situation worse. In fact, on Monday the EPA released the results of its own research showing that oil mixed with dispersants is no more harmful to larvae than oil alone. Even if you accept that research, it doesn't necessarily prove that using dispersants was a good idea, because we don't know the long-term effects of the dispersants on the food chain and whether it will find its way into humans.
But let's say for sake of argument that it turned out that applying the dispersants was in fact a good idea. Would such a determination lead us to conclude that the oil spill was in fact not that big a deal? Obviously, the answer is no.
In fact, being asked to choose between oil alone and oil mixed with dispersants is sort of like needing to choose between having your arm broken with a baseball bat or having your arm broken with a baseball bat while you're high on Rush Limbaugh's favorite pain pill. You don't really want either choice. In fact, being asked to make the choice should make you really mad, because it's the kind of choice nobody should have to make.
Unfortunately, it's a choice we've been asked to make by BP, pro-drilling politicians, and other oil companies. Given that reality, it probably makes sense to do the research and figure out whether dispersants are useful or not, because it's going to take some time before we stop drilling in the Gulf, and during that time, we're bound to have more accidents. But hopefully while that research proceeds and the issue continues to get debated, we don't distract ourselves from the fundamental problem that BP's oil spill demonstrated: with every passing day, with every barrel of oil we consume, it gets harder and riskier to find that next barrel. We're at that point in history when virtually all the easily extractable oil is gone. There's still oil to be had, but the cost of getting it is rising, and will continue to rise -- and the disaster in the Gulf is one of those costs.
So while it's somewhat important to get the dispersant issue right, it's really a sideshow. The fundamental issue is that oil's heyday has come and gone. We're witnessing the death of the world's primary source of energy. And the real question is whether we're going to get serious about finding other sources of energy so that we can preserve our way of life, or if we're going to let ourselves go the way of oil.