Even though the Deepwater Horizon well has been capped and the relief wells are almost finished, the BP oil disaster is far from over. It will take decades to recover from this catastrophe.
I don't think people fully realize the scale of the damage: BP has ruined the Gulf of Mexico. One company has single handedly destroyed an enormous source of beauty, marine life, and cultural traditions that have been passed down for generations.
It's unconscionable. And it's time to put our foot down. We need to establish better safety regulations, and we need to hold BP accountable for its disastrous behavior. I've worked with NRDC to record a video to help tell this story and I hope you'll watch it:
I was born and raised in New Orleans. I spent my youth swimming at Gulf beaches from Grand Isle to Pass Christian, sailing on Lake Pontchartrain, traveling through the wetlands by boat. It is a glorious region, and I am lucky to have grown up there.
But when I returned to some of those places a month ago, I was sickened by what I saw. I went out on a boat with my mother, who is a councilwoman for New Orleans, and Billy Nungesser, the president of Plaquemines Parish. We went through Barataria Bay and within 15 minutes of leaving the dock, we were in a sea of oil.
I remember the bay as a place filled with wildlife -- birds, alligators, sea turtles, and of course abundant oyster, shrimp, and crab beds. But since the BP explosion, the bay has become an industrial zone.
Oil sheen covered the water as far as we could see, and in every single marsh we passed, it was as if someone had taken a giant brush, dipped it in a big bucket of paint and painted the grass black. We went over to Cat Island, where the pelicans gather. There was no place for them to land that was oil-free, so they touched down in oily water, and their bellies were covered with the stuff.
I was shocked to see the booms they are using to try to block the oil. They're like band aids on gunshot wounds. They are incapable of protecting the marshes.
Even though Americans have seen photos of the spill, I am not sure we have grasped just how hard this is hitting people in the Gulf.
There are men who will never fish or shrimp again. There are Gulf children graduating from high school who will never find jobs in fishing or tourism. There are oyster beds that may never come back -- and that's why the 134-year old New Orleans institution, P&J Oyster Company, has stopped shucking. The company survived several wars and the Great Depression, but BP has finally brought it to a halt.
This spill is a wakeup call for all of us. It's criminal that one company can take so much away from so many people, and we have to stop it. We need to strengthen the regulations for offshore drilling so a disaster like this never happens again. And we need to shift to the cleaner cars that will help us need less Gulf oil in the first place.
And we need to figure out a way to clean up the damage already done in the Gulf. Traveling through the blackened marshes, I got the sense that the task was Sisyphean, but I remain hopeful.
In the meantime, I still worry that the spill will fade from the headlines, and people will forget that BP has trashed the Gulf of Mexico. I hope instead that Americans will keep clamoring until this once-vibrant region is restored.
In the Gulf region, the people apparently do not love Nature's beauty and bounty enough to protect her. Indeed, after the BP gusher, Gulf people were clamoring for drilling to begin again. Because of oil and gas and chemical plants, the entire Mississippi delta and Gulf Coast regions are the most polluted and toxic in the country. People there have astronomical cancer, allergy and asthma rates, but keep electing corporate Republicans.
People of the Gulf region relate to nature as an object to be exploited. They have allowed thousands of offshore oil wells and base livelihoods on killing fish, oysters, shrimp, wildlife and an ecosystem. Instead of loving the beauty and bountry Nature provided, Gulf region people cared only about how to turn that beauty into cold hard cash. When you love money more than Nature, ultimately you will pay the price. Karma is inexorable and Nature bats last.
The rest of the country was sick at heart at the images of dying oiled endangered pelicans and sea turtles. The innocents suffer because of the greed and stupidity of modern money-loving humans. Gulf people are reaping what they sowed.
The oil industry is part of who they are
They report that there is no noticeable oil in the gulf . Sounds good till you are here. It takes about 20 minutes to find plenty of oil off Barataria.
I have long considered the Barataria Bay /Lafitte area of Southern Louisiana to be one of the most inspiring hallowed areas of our country. Go there now , it is creepy quiet , no sounds of nature nothing hallowed about it where are the pelicans and blue heron and the sounds of life in the swamp??? It is all stomped.
The oyster estuaries are full of oil. Oysters take 21/2 years to mature so this crop is lost and who knows what will happen in the next 21/2 years to 5 years.
The people in that area have been shrimpers for 140 years. Even if they succeed in their catch, no one in the rest of the country will trust the Southern Louisiana "BRAND" for years to come. We have yet to determine the effects of the dispersant on the oxygen levels in the water and subsequent effects on animal and fishlife in the area. Not to mention marsh plants and sea animals
The "miracle "is how quickly and others like you decide that everything is okay without knowing about which you speak...
They just wanna keep driving ...
Dam, if the demand for fuel was not so great none of this might have happened.
In english: The market demanded more crude oil. So, the folks at BP et. al. said, 'OK', and towed their rig into position, dropped anchor, and fired up the machinery, and set about the business of trying to drill a hole 13,000 feet deeper than the ocean floor, which was already 5,000 feet down, well past crush depth for most manned submersibles. Then, under management pressure, they pushed this already risky process. Then, the worst happened, and the well filled up with oil and pressurized methane, and KAR-BOOM! Splash one oil rig. Did millions of people start boycotting automobiles? No. People just shrugged, and changed channels to ESPN, to catch the latest sports scores. Well, personally, I think that people like Pickens will do a lot more for our national transition off oil than the public ever will, heartfelt sentiments notwithstanding.
They can always find jobs in the oil industry that we go out of our way to protect at the expense of the environment. I think government and policy has demonstrated which they feel is more important.
The oil companies however doomed Louisiana and the wetlands more than 50 years ago when the State allowed them to drill in the wet lands and make channels to get access and then not repair the damage. And yet those in Lousiana never take this responsibility and wnat the BIG government to bail them out. ,,, any more than the south admits that most of those repug states are welfare states gettting more federal money back than they pay in while decrying welfare or redistribution of wealth, just liek an former part time Alaskan governor who headed another welfare state,
The 3000 acres soiled is wetlands that wouild have been loss by year end anyway! Where is the demands from Lousiana's to have a tax placed on Big Oil to p[ay for the 50 billion cost to save their disappearing life style/land???
The repugs would now like the American taxpayers to pick up the 50 billion in damage done by Big Oil to the wetlands, and then at the same time complain about government and not those on Big Oils payroll or their own state government for doing nothing as the state washed away and New Orlenas lost its protection.! Anyone in Lousiana running for office and demanding that the oil companies pay to fix what they destroyed?
Regards .
I am sure every single American has a responsibility to own up to their share for the reasons the spill ocurred; inefficient autos and homes and a lackadaisical mentorship of corporations and legislators to name but a few. Does it really matter what the cleanup costs? Isn't the price of inaction, both toward the cleanup and moving to end the use of fossil fuels forever, far steeper?
I hope we are able to make BP pay for this, both financially and criminally. It is very much deserved. I, on the other hand, don't want to wait for trials to begin for the cleanup to continue. Do you?
It is not individual Americans who decided that we need gasoline-powered automobilies instead of efficient public transportation. It was the oil and auto industries who foisted their preferences on the American public.
The Europeans have been smarter, almost every city I have visited there has excellent public transportation, trains, light rail, street cars, underground metros. There is no reason that cannot happen in America except for the contrary lobbying of the oil and auto industries. I do not understand why Americans stupidly keep electing oil men to public office.
And by the way, most of my transportation is done on an electric bike that gets its electrical recharge from electricity made by non-polluting hydropower. There is no reason that people cannot learn to walk, run, bike and drive electric cars.
I do not watch BP commercials, but you must spend a lot of time watching them
All reported the waste of money on places where no oil was even present.
You make the assumption that I stand in the way of progress, while in reality it is you who will stop progress with your one way views.
I think its safe to say that responsibility lies in many places and that ALL those responsible should hang.
BP is not responsible for the spill. They didnt do it, we did. We do it every day, every time we fill up our cars, every time we buy the products that contain the oil. We do it, own up to that fact, and instead of demanding that they make better safety precautions, how about we make a real choice and demand that we dont f....... drill out there any more..
BP? hardly. Just 30 years ago someone else did the same damn thing and none of this hubub was raised. We didnt care then, too many people dont care now.
What will it take for everyone to finally demand NO MORE OIL!!!!
But talk extremely and your ideas are branded as such and you hurt your own cause.
And you are wrong on another fact.. its not so much filling up.. thats a necessity although repug blocking changes to CAFE stds for more than a decade did not help even in the face of energy cost incresing 400% under BUSH. Greate Energy plan reougs.. of course it was a written by BP, Enron and etc...... Our real energy problem is our homes and our power plants, aging electric grid all of which are far less than half as effecient as in Japan or Europe.
Regards
Regards
No, its not an easy choice, but America wasn't born on making easy choices. It's time... its past time to start making hard choices. Choices that will suck down to our nethers, but if we don't then the only choice we've made is to leave it, again, for the next generation. I DONT WANT TO CHOOSE THAT OPTION. :(
I am an avid fan of yours and appreciate what you're doing with the NRDC. However, I think the environmental groups have been woefully silent on this devastating travesty, and I'm loathe to think that it's because of some sensitivity toward this administration but I can't help but wonder. My memories of the Exxon Valdez were images of animal after animal drenched in oil whereas I've seen the same dozen photos repeated time and again during this crisis. We've lost thousands of marine lives but I see no coordinated effort from environmental groups to shock people's sensitivities about the loss. Maybe it's the media's fault, but I'm really sick of blaming them for everything. Maybe we're just desensitized as a nation. But it's so sad to me that we're not collectively doing something to save the animals we can. Anyway, thanks for your effort to bring attention to the catastrophe and keep up the great screen work.
I cannto believe that you are so gullible and naive. Do a ltitle googling and you will be able to find stories and photographs of dead birds, fish, turtles, pelicans, dolphins, etc.