You're right it won't go to zero, in the same sense that airplane crashes won't ever go to zero. however that's because it's really hard to prevent all airplane crashes/oil spills, not because people are "too indifferent".
Pipeline incidents have been roughly constant over time: https://portal.phmsa.dot.gov/analytics/saw.dll?Portalpages&P...
Edit: Also, the data you referenced comes from an organization that's run by oil companies and tanker operators (https://www.itopf.org/about-us/the-board/). I doubt they'd just fabricate data, but they are incentivized to massage the definition of what counts as an "oil spill from a tanker". If I were relying on this data I'd probably want to find an independent source.
Edit 2: NOAA data of all spills does not show a downward trend: https://incidentnews.noaa.gov/raw/index
I couldn't get the link to work. If it's flat, but the amount of oil being transported is up, isn't that still a decline?
>Edit 2: NOAA data of all spills does not show a downward trend: https://incidentnews.noaa.gov/raw/index
I fed the chart into excel and generated a graph: https://i.imgur.com/QKu2Yly.png
looks like even though incidents (orange line) is up, the amount spilled (blue) is down.
I appreciate your optimism. The downward trend in amount spilled is nice to see, but that value is unknown for nearly half the entries, so I wouldn't read too much into it. I'm not saying it's impossible that things are getting better, I even think it's likely, but it's certainly not at the same level as airplane safety, where everything that can be done is being done and crashes are incredibly rare. It is trivial to find examples of the oil industry failing to do the bare minimum (here's one recent report, the first thing I found: https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-21-293). I'm very comfortable stepping on a plane, but I would not be comfortable living next to a pipeline or making a living fishing next to an oil rig, and I think the statistics back up my feelings.
Of course, it's idealistic and humans would never behave this way.
For now there’s a social outcry if oil spills far away, but imagine you see dead ocean out of your window. Could be a sci-fi setting…
Oil spills will also continue as long we extract oil from the bottom of the ocean (and to a degree land). In contrast to airplanes however, we should have a future where we stop extracting it from the earth. In order prevent climate change we need to stop today, and every day we continue to pump it up we are stepping further into catastrophe.
We can have a future were electric planes flies in the sky. We can't have a future were we continue pumping up more oil. The oil need to stay where it is.