Foreword
In December
1971 the Trustees of the Ford Foundation authorized the
organization of the Energy Policy Project. In subsequent decisions
the Trustees have approved supporting appropriations to a total of
$4 million, which is being spent over a three-year period for a
series of studies and reports by responsible authorities in a wide
range of fields. The Project Director is S. David Freeman, and the
Project has had the continuing advice of a distinguished Advisory
Board chaired by Gilbert White.
This analysis
of "Oil Spills and the Marine Environment" is one of the outputs of
the Project. As Mr. Freeman explains in his Preface, neither the
Foundation nor the Project presumes to judge the specific
conclusions and recommendations of the authors who prepared this
volume. We do commend this report to the public as a serious and
responsible analysis which has been subjected to review by a number
of qualified readers.
This study,
like many others in the Project, deals with a sensitive and
difficult question of public policy. Not all of it is easy reading,
and not all those we have consulted have agreed with all of it. Nor
does it exhaust a subject which is complex, controversial, and
importantly obscured by major gaps in the available scientific
data. The matters it addresses are of great and legitimate interest
not only to those who are investing heavily in refineries and other
petroleum producing and shipping facilities, but also to those who
live and work in the areas potentially affected by oil pollution,
and in one way or another to citizens throughout the country; the
perspectives of these interested parties are not likely to be
identical.
In this last
respect the present study reflects tensions which are intrinsic to
the whole of the Energy Policy Project—tensions between one
set of objectives and another. As the worldwide energy crisis has
become evident to us all, we have had many graphic illustrations of
such tensions, and there are more ahead. This is what usually
happens when a society faces hard choices, all of them carrying
costs that are both human and material.