Tragic Oil Spills

What do I know about this picture?
I know that the two birds in the picture are probably the same type of bird. Except one is suffocating in oil. It really breaks my heart to know that this is what's happening in the world, and to wildlife.

It makes me think, 'what if there wasnt oil drilled there in the first place?', 'why wasn't the cap on the pipe checked to make sure that it worked properly?'. It's far too late to be asking these questions, but we can always take this and learn from it for the future. But it gives me such a frustrated feeling knowing that wildlife such as those two birds are paying for our mistake. I remember reading an article about how it took too much time and effort to clean every single animal affected by the oil spill, so an idea was proposed to kill the oil-covered animals, or to just let them die. Thats what it's come to? I am shocked, speechless and...Ashamed.