The story of the blade failure at the Vineyard Wind offshore wind facility in the waters off Nantucket continues to evolve. As the cleanup concludes, investigations are being conducted into potential manufacturing and/or quality control issues regarding the blade that broke on July 13.

Nobody likes having debris wash up on their beaches — even if it is not toxic — and this incident is red meat for those who were already trying to stop America’s nascent offshore wind industry.

A local anti-wind group has even gone so far as to claim that it will be more difficult to clean up the debris from this blade failure than cleaning up an offshore oil spill. Such a comparison is in extremely poor taste given the realities of what cleaning up an oil spill entails, and the potential health consequences for those involved.

It’s important that GE Verona get to the root of the manufacturing problem that caused this failure and fix it. But that this incident is the worst outcome that we are likely to see speaks to why offshore wind is vastly superior in terms of environmental impacts than the gas and petroleum that are the primary fuels for our region’s electricity, heat, and transportation.

The devastating effects of fossil fuel dependence are already being experienced by those who are in the sacrifice zones of our nation’s oil and gas industry. I lived in New Orleans during the largest oil “spill” in U.S. history and saw up-close some of these impacts, which are still ongoing.

In April 2010, the Deepwater Horizon offshore oil rig experienced a blowout that led to an explosion, killing 11 crew members and producing flames 200 to 300 feet high and visible from 35 miles away.

For months, oil from the unplugged well continued to pour into the Gulf of Mexico. Crews were raised, including local people in the fishing industry, to help with the cleanup. Incredible volumes of chemical dispersants were aerially sprayed over the waters of the Gulf and coastal communities.

By the time the well was plugged 87 days later, more than 200 million gallons of oil had flooded the Gulf. Up to a million seabirds were killed. More than 1,000 sea turtles were found dead — environmental groups estimate that more than 6,000 were injured or killed — and 22,000 tons of oil washed up on 1,300 miles of coastline.

Due to the use of dispersants, much of the oil was never cleaned up, but merely broken down into smaller bits and sifted through the Gulf waters, contaminating the entire marine food web.

This devastated Louisiana’s commercial fishing and aquaculture industry. Closures in the aftermath of the spill cost the industry an estimated $247 million, but harvests of shrimp and oysters were vastly reduced for years to follow and questions lingered about the safety of eating potentially contaminated fish and shellfish. One study estimated that over seven years, the spill may have caused $8.7 billion in economic damage.

There was also the impact on human health. In June 2010, the state of Louisiana reported that 143 people, including 108 involved in the cleanup effort, received urgent or emergency medical care as the result of exposure. BP paid $65 million to more than 22,000 people in one medical settlement.

But many of the effects of exposure to the airborne polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) that were released in the spill, such as increased risks of cancer, respiratory conditions, and heart disease, can take years to manifest. Nearly 5,000 health-related lawsuits had been filed in the Eastern District of Louisiana by January 2020, and the full effects of the PAH and chemical dispersants will likely never be known.

The Gulf of Mexico is a long way away from Block Island, but that does not mean that New England has had no oil spills. In 1976 the Argo Merchant ran aground on Nantucket Shoals and spilled its entire load of 7.7 million gallons of fuel oil, prompting the creation of a new office in the federal government to deal with oil spills.

In 1989 the World Prodigy hit a reef and spilled 300,000 gallons of oil near Aquidneck Island, which forced the closure of beaches and shellfish beds. In 1996, a tanker barge grounded near Moonstone Beach in Rhode Island, spilling an estimated 828,000 gallons of heating oil. This spill killed 9 million lobster, 150 million surf clams, 4.2 million fish, a million crabs, shrimp, clams, and oysters, and 2,100 marine birds, including 402 loons.

And finally, in 2003 the tanker Bouchard Barge 120 hit a ledge in Buzzard’s Bay, spilling 98,000 gallons of oil into waters off Massachusetts and Rhode Island and spreading oil over 100 miles of shoreline.

Each of these spills was smaller in magnitude than Deepwater Horizon. But they were still highly damaging to aquatic life and caused financial impacts to fisheries that make the blade failure at Vineyard Wind seem trivial.

And many smaller spills never make the news. The U.S. Department of the Interior documented 992 oil spills in federal waters in 2021 and 2022 alone, with a total of 80,000 gallons of oil spilled. And yet no one shuts down the industry; after each spill, the offshore oil rigs go back to work and the oil tankers keep coming. Our society is hooked on petroleum.

One of the distinct memories I have from New Orleans during the Deepwater Horizon disaster was the feeling of powerlessness. BP was in charge of the cleanup, and federal and state officials appeared to be taking orders from the oil company. News was limited, and we felt largely in the dark as the planes laden with dispersant flew overhead.

We organized protests calling on the government to hold BP accountable, but it often felt like yelling into the wind. And every time we filled up our cars, we knew we were contributing to the killing of the Gulf.

Today we have solutions to our fossil fuel dependency that are being scaled. In New England, offshore wind directly replaces a portion of the petroleum that we burn for electricity generation.

Offshore wind generates more electricity in the winter than in other seasons, and winter — particularly during cold snaps — is when New England burns a disproportionate amount of oil to run power plants. Since offshore wind has no fuel costs, it will always run first in wholesale power markets and displace the most expensive form of generation. In the winter that often means petroleum.

This is just the beginning. As New England switches to heat pumps and electric vehicles, offshore wind can be part of the electricity mix to power these, chipping away at much larger sources of oil demand and usage. Offshore wind can play even more of a role when we pair it with batteries, and build more two-way transmission lines to trade power with Canada.

All of this means fewer ships coming into New England carrying petroleum, and fewer oil spills. It will also help us to avoid the worst effects of the climate crisis, on land and in our oceans.

Oceans have absorbed the vast majority of the excess heat from climate change to date. Warmer water holds less oxygen, and warm surface layers prevent oxygen from mixing deeper in the ocean. The reduction in oxygen has a range of negative effects on marine life, including less viable habitat for a range of species.

Additionally, the CO2 which we are putting into our atmosphere dissolves in seawater, forming carbonic acid. We’ve already made our oceans 30% more acidic, which impacts the ability of aquatic species such as oysters, lobsters, and clams to form shells. Excess acidity isn’t good for fish, either.

The climate crisis promises to make our oceans hot, sour, and breathless. The question is how quickly, and if we will have time to try to arrest this damage.

If we want to avoid not only the next offshore oil spill but the future collapse of marine ecosystems and the fisheries that depend on them, we need to deploy clean, non-emitting solutions for electricity, transportation, and heating as quickly as possible. This includes offshore wind, as there is no better resource to get large volumes of clean winter power online quickly.

There are going to be setbacks and problems like blade failures. These, in the big picture, are a small price to pay to escape the horrific environmental consequences of our dependence on fossil fuels. For anyone who cares about our oceans, our fishing industry, and the future of our region, the choice is clear.

Christian Roselund is an energy policy analyst, father, writer, and community organizer who lives in Providence.