Exxon Valdez Clean Up

Cars and planes have made people’s lives so much easier and more convenient. However, none of these modes of transportation would work without the existence of oil. Therefore, oil has played an extremely vital role in people’s lives ever since the start of the 20^th century. According to the book American Photography: A Century of Images, “with the rise of supertankers and offshore drilling have come devastating oil spills, most notably that of the Exxon Valdez in Alaska on March 24, 1989. It has become commonplace to see images of oil-covered animals – marine birds, a sea otter, dead fish – that symbolize the devastation” (Goldberg and Silberman). Humans have made their lives so much easier with the cost of countless deaths of animals and irrecoverable damage of the natural world.

This photograph of the Exxon Valdez Clean Up by Natalie Fobes in 1989 is in no way as extravagant as many award-winning-photographs; however, the meaning behind the scene is irreplaceable. In this photograph, everything in the background is in chaos and hundreds of workers are trying to rescue the environment from oil pollution. Finally, human beings have to face the consequences of over-developing Earth. If this happened back in the days when the Industrial Revolution had just begun, when people were still building factories after factories to develop and flourish their society, people might not make such a big deal out of this pollution since they had not yet realized the importance of nature. However, this happened in the late 20^th century, a time when many educated elites and people cared about the environment. Our actions have finally hit us and reminded us that both humans and nature live on the same Earth. As a result, more and more people nowadays do as much as they can to benefit the environment. Though many try to be environmentally friendly, how many of them are willing to give up their comfortable city lives and return to nature? People are too used to the convenience technology has brought them. This cruel fact once again reflects the change of our relationship with nature: we take advantage of it in any way possible, but we are not willing to get “close” to it.