"'The oil has been stopped!' Those were the words of Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser July 16th to a huge crowd of assembled fishermen, small business owners and residents of a town hall meeting with Kenneth Feinberg, administrator of BP's $20 billion claims fund." So writes Rocky Kirstner, here on Switchboard, NRDC's blog.
But "while that was music to the ears of everyone in the audience here in Port Sulphur, LA," Kirstner reports, after 3 months of failed attempts at plugging the BP oil rig blowout, all are cautious that this time it really worked, and most are deeply troubled by all the oil that has been spewed and now despoils the Gulf, one of the most productive marine ecosystems in the world.
The fact is, only a fraction of the millions of gallons of crude oil that have flooded in the Gulf of Mexico rises to the surface where attempts have been made to clean it up. Much remains dissolved or dispersed in the Gulf's waters where, as graphically depicted in Go Below the Surface, an engaging new web interactive created by NRDC scientists, it is having devastating impacts on whales, dolphin, turtle, tuna and other critical marine life.
The toll on the biota and those living and working in and along the Gulf coast is of course vastly greater than the impact on the rest of us, but concern is widespread across America and consensus is building that we need to break our addiction to oil at home through individual action as well as by moving forward with government reform, as this recent poll shows.
Reducing our own addiction to oil is hard work, says addiction specialist, Dr. Sarah Warren, but it's quite doable and can be very successful, as evidenced by OPower's experience, when neighbors are encouraged by neighbors. Making your home more efficient is a fundamental first step in smacking down your energy needs and therefore your oil use. Other simple steps include cutting down our fossil-fuel intensive meat eating and changing our commute away from cars and toward walking, biking and public transit.
It also means being conscious of the oil used to make everyday products, not the least of which is in excess plastic packaging. In an ongoing series, the NRDC Simple Steps team looks at how oil is used in products and how to stretch our resources farther by choosing petroleum-free products, recycling plastic waste and buying items with recycled content.
By the way, if you are looking for Gulf-friendly fish, give the Gulf shrimp a rest and, as explained here, ask for Henry & Lisa's Natural Seafood where you shop, look for the blue Marine Stewardship Council or when buying wild-caught, look for varieties from the Pacific coast, particularly Oregon and British Columbia.