April 14, 2011
What If an Oil Spill Happened Near You?
It’s been one year since the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded, but the explosion and subsequent months-long spill has largely faded from public consciousness. And if people do think about the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, they think about it happening “somewhere else,” to “someone else’s” community, and not really affecting their daily lives.
To mark the one-year anniversary since the worst environmental disaster in our nation’s history, Oceana is asking the question: “What If It Happened Here?” What if the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion and spill happened at a well-known and easily recognizable place in America? Would we still be chanting, “Drill, baby, drill?”
To try to personalize this message for people we created an ad campaign on display now in the Washington, D.C. Metro system that depicts the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion happening at the Tidal Basin in Washington, D.C., the New York Harbor, and the San Francisco Bay.
We hope that by asking the question, “What If It Happened Here?” we will get people to think about how they would be affected, and how their communities would be affected, if the BP oil spill happened off their coasts. We hope these ads will help people realize that we need to stop the drill.