Our Name

The Deepwater Horizon

Our name is a rejection of the system that made BP’s offshore drilling rig the Deepwater Horizon a reality. This rig drilled over 10 km deep in the Gulf of Mexico only to burst and spill 4.9 million barrels of crude oil into our oceans in the summer of 2010. We then intentionally dumped 4.5 million litres of toxic dispersants into the waters to “clean” the oil. Since then, fishermen have been finding shrimp without eyes, crabs without claws, and fish with oozing sores.

This is not what we want on our horizon.

Our Executive Director recalls being stuck in traffic that summer while listening to radio pundits all blame BP for the tragedy. As he sat there, he counted 14 lanes of barely-moving vehicles, all burning fossil fuel. There were thousands of vehicles idling within eyesight and millions more stuck in traffic all over the world at that very moment. While most seemed content to blame BP, he recognized that we were all complicit.

This is how we create Our Horizon.

Unlike many environmental organizations, we do not solely blame industry. Our position is that we each share responsibility for this tragedy; indeed, it is the decisions that we each make on a daily basis that shape our collective reality and make such tragedies possible. When it comes to the big issues like climate change, the uncomfortable truth is that we are all responsible. It is only when we acknowledge our role in this unsustainable system that we will be able to take meaningful steps to create a much more desirable future. This is how we create Our Horizon.