The Torrey Canyon Disaster, Everyday Life, and the “Greening” of Britain

Abstract

This article challenges the predominant narrative of the rise of modern environmentalism that supports much of the historiography on environmental ideas and movements. Through a study of the effects of the Torrey Canyon disaster of 1967, we show that everyday life is a vital mediator of environmental catastrophes, and has played a crucial role in rendering ambiguous popular attitudes towards the impact of disasters on the natural world. Using oral interview evidence, neglected by much environmental history, we trace the connections between the experience of the disaster and the contradictory ways in which this experience was or, more commonly, was not translated into environmentalist sensibility. We study the ways in which everyday concerns about economic insecurity created antagonistic understandings of the disaster that both magnified its unfortunate impact and complicated its subsequent meaning. We argue that attitudes towards the spill and its effects on nature were often contradictory. On the one hand there was a powerful association with the suffering of wildlife affected by the spill. Yet simultaneously many of those interviewed rejected explicit environmental activism, or drew only weak lines of connection between green ideas and their own experience of environmental disaster. We suggest that everyday environmental discourse should be seen as more geographically specific, ambiguous, and self-aware than that which is traditionally associated with the conservation movement, and that oral history can be a vital tool in developing a more sophisticated understanding of the complex social nature of modern environmentalism.

Making the Nēnē Matter: Valuing Life in Postwar Conservation

“…The exclusion of Native Hawaiian perspectives in the 1950s and 1960s reaffirms that these values and interests belonged to elite groups that were largely white, male, and Western, leaving little room for the "everyday environmentalism" that emanated from communities without formal connection to professional conservation. 85 Highlighting how endangered animals are valued in ways that reflect historically contingent beliefs and power relations cautions us against presuming that there can be easy answers to ongoing concerns about widespread species loss today. As Julia Adeney Thomas has noted, different ways of knowing and valuing the world mean "it is impossible to treat 'endangerment' as a simple scientific fact."…”

Investigation of Oil Spills from Oil Tankers through Grey Theory: Events from 1974 to 2016

“…Here, we investigate the causes of oil spills to analyze the related factors using grey theory. Among the worst accidents of oil spills from oil tankers was the Torrey Canyon incident that occurred in 1967 when the ship struck Pollard's Rock on the Seven Stones reef in the English Channel [1][2][3]. Consequently, the ship leaked approximately 119,000 tons of crude oil.…”