Enough is enough!
It is disgusting. Despicable.
This oil spill has gone on long enough. BP failed by allowing this to happen in the first place--and their attempts to stem the flow of oil have all failed as well. If this trend continues, this leak could go on for a year or more. Join the cause: here's a post from deviantART member Yuumei's journal:
I’m sure most of you know about BP’s (British Petroleum) Gulf of Mexico oil spill (aka Deepwater Horizon oil spill) by now. The offshore oil drilling rig exploded on April 20th, well over a month ago, and yet it is still spilling at around 800,000 to 4,200,000 US gallons of crude oil every day. What's even more shocking is the amount of corruption that led to the spill and delay in clean up.
The current situation raises many questions:
*How this happen?
There are many causes and finger pointing, but the most important issue is that BP did not know what they were doing and were not prepared for disaster. Most of the construction plans were not safe and should not have been approved by MMS (Mineral Management Service that’s part of US Department of interior) but the MMS officials were too busy looking at porn and tripping on Meth to do a proper job. The MMS officials were appointed by the Bush administration due to business ties with the oil industry; they have now been disbanded by the Obama administration.
*Why is oil still spilling after 40 days and when will it stop?
Three days after the explosion, they still believed no oil was spilled at all. BP’s slow reaction to realizing the spill is the least of the problem. After finding out about it, BP lied about the amount that’s leaking until the government ordered BP to post all data of the spill online live at their site. [link] . BP also thought that no oil would reach land so they took their sweet time. Every measure they’ve tried has failed and now they’re trying “Top Kill” to pump whatever they have (like cement, golf balls, and tires) into the spill site in hopes of blocking it. BP has learned nothing since the 1979 oil spill in the same gulf, they tried the same techniques back then but didn't work for 9 months until they finished building a relief well [link] . We have no idea if "Top Kill" will work (since it didn't work in 1979) or how long oil will continue to spill. New edit as of Saturday May 29th, "Top Kill" has failed to work as predicted. Bp is going to try to capture some of the spilling oil, but predicts that they won't be able to stop the leak until they finish drilling a relief well at least 2-3 months from now. That's right, the oil is going to spill until August or more. Way to FAIL, BP.
*How large is the environmental and economic damage?
This is the largest offshore oil spill in American history. Not only is BP not doing enough to stop the spill, they chose to use Corexit 95, a highly toxic skin burning chemical banned in the UK, as the oil dispersant. Now, not only are there deadly oil floating around, but also over 60,000 gallons in toxic plumes of burning chemicals as well (see video [link] ) On May 19th, the NEPA ordered BP to find a less toxic dispersant within 24 hours but BP ignored them and continued to use Corexit. BP chose to use Coretix not because it's effective (it's not, there are plenty of better chemicals to use) they chose it because they had a business deal with the Coretix maker. BP is being cheap and not caring about the consequences. Not only is the fishing industry in ruins, but the lasting environmental impact can go on for decades. This is what the damage looks like underwater. Oil has already washed up on the shores of several islands and killed many birds, turtles, and fish, endangering over 4,000 species of birds and marine life. Due to the loop current, the oil can be spread all the way to Florida.
*What about the other existing offshore drills and the ones that will be built in the Artic wildlife reserves?
Unfortunately, the other oil drills are still in operation and won’t be shut down, and new shallow water drilling permits are still being handed out. Obama has postponed the scheduled Artic oil exploitation by one year; hoping public outrage would die down by then to allow them to continue this selfish act. We can not just let this go and wait until another oil spill to occur to regret our mistakes. Offshore drilling needs to be permanently banned right now. Saying something like "we should keep drilling, but just make it safer" doesn't change anything. It's easy to say let's make it safer but the matter of fact is, accidents, carelessness and oversight WILL happen. There have been over 80 oil spills in history, 4 in 2010, and 2 of those 4 are in America. The only way to be safe from this disaster is to ban offshore drilling. Again, this video gives a fine example of how it did not get any safer since the 1979 spill.
Just sitting around saying, "Oh, that's terrible" and doing nothing DOESN'T HELP! If you think it's so terrible, then DO something! I urge you to do more than sit around. Join Yuumei's contest to help spread awareness. Spread the word: your blog, Facebook, Twitter, the forums on other sites you visit, e-mail, whatever! Go to your local salon, get a haircut, and ask them to use your hair to help soak up the oil! Dog and cat hair works, as well.
Sign these petitions or make donations at the following sites to help with clean-up and permanently ban offshore drilling:
Boycott BP brands to show them we don't approve of their stupidity and don't intend to fuel it again!
List of brands: http://boycottbp.blogspot.com/2010/05/dont-buy-these-brands.html
Time is running out. Hundreds, even thousands of species of wildlife are in danger of extinction from the spill.
I could go on and on about the idiocies of many humans, but this speech from Maximum Ride: The Final Warning by James Patterson sums it all up (no copyright infringement intended; material copyright James Patterson. I do not own Maximum Ride or any associated titles.) :
"Look," I said. "There's a lot of official stuff I could quote and put up on the screen with PowerPoint. But what you need to know, what the world needs to know, is that we're really destroying the earth in a more catastrophic way than anyone has ever imagined."I mean, I've seen a lot of the world, the only world we have. There are so many awesome, beautiful things in it. Waterfalls and mountains, thermal pools surrounded by ice and snow as far as you can see. Beautiful beaches with sand like white sugar. Fields and fields of wildflowers. Places where the ocean crashes up against a mountainside, like it's done for hundreds of thousands of years."I've also seen concrete cities with hardly any green. And rivers whose pretty rainbow surfaces came from an oil leak upstream. Animals are becoming extinct right now, in my lifetime. Just recently, I went through one of the worst hurricanes ever recorded. It was a whole lot worse because of huge, worldwide climate changes caused by...us. We, the people...."'We the people of the United States,'" I began, "'in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.'"A more perfect union? While huge corporations do whatever they want to whoever they want, and other people live in subway tunnels? Where's the justice of that? Kids right here in America go to bed hungry every night, while other people get four-hundred-dollar haircuts. Promote the general welfare? Where's the general welfare of strip-mining, toxic pesticides, industrial solvents being dumped into rivers, killing everything? Domestic tranquility? Ever sleep in a forest that's being clear-cut? You'd be hearing chain saws in your head for weeks. The blessings of liberty? Yes. I'm using one of the blessings of liberty right now, my freedom of speech, to tell you guys, who make the laws, that the very ground you stand on, the house you live in, the children you tuck in at night, are all in immediate, catastrophic danger...."Every minute of every day, cars belch exhaust. Factories spew toxins into the air, land, and water. We've cleared millions of square miles of forests, rain forests, and plains, which means tons of topsoils is just washing away. Which means loss of animals and plants, and increased fires, floods, and costal disintegration. Just by the stuff people have made, created, we're raising the overall temperature of the entire atmosphere. Well, we only have the one atmosphere! What do you plan to do when it's destroyed? Can we all hold our breath until we get a new one?"The problem is here, now," I went on. "Nine of the ten hottest years ever recorded have happened in my lifetime. I'm fourteen. More or less."" I, Nixitra, am too, people! ""There have been record-setting weather extremes across the globe--tornadoes, hurricanes, typhoons, droughts, wildfires, tsunamis. We're warming up the planet, and the planet's ice is melting. If only fifty percent of the world's ice melts, countless rivers and streams will overflow and then dry up, killing hundreds of thousands of people from disease and starvation. The ocean water level will rise anywhere from four feet to maybe twenty feet. How many of your favorite vacation spots would be under water? Want to see the Eiffel Tower by canoe? Do any of you own beach houses? Kiss 'em goodbye. And not two hundred years from now. Soon. Maybe in this lifetime."We can't reverse this disaster, even if we all pitched in now and did everything we could, which, face it, we're not going to do. A small percentage of us will do stuff, and other people will ignore the problem and hope they'll be dead before it gets really bad. But there are things we can do that would at least help. It would make a difference."The US could ratify the Kyoto treaty. Pretty much every country in the world, except us and Australia, has ratified it. How can we be so pigheaded? Wait--don't answer that. I know our time here is limited."In general, we need to pay more attention to what we do, what we buy, who we buy it from. Use compact flourescent bulbs. If every house in America replaced just one of its regular lightbulbs with a compact flourescent, it would be like taking a million cars off the road. I mean, how hard is that? I can do the math, and I've never even gone to school!"Look into other kinds of power. Windmills, water mills, solar power--every year corporations pay a jillion dollars in legal fees to avoid getting fined for pollution violations. What if they took a tiny percentage of that money and put it toward coming up with better energy sources?"Right now America looks like a fatheaded, short-sighted, gas-guzzling, arrogant blowhard to the rest of the world. And Sweden looks all clean and tidy and progressive. I mean, where's our sense of pride?"Why can't we be the progressive leaders, showing the rest of the world how to clean up its act? Why can't we, the people, get more involved and push through legislation that will help clean up our air, land, and water? Why can't we take government funds from stupid things like war and use them for programs that will develop better fuel sources?"I'm just one kid, and not even a regular kid. But if I can come up with all this, why can't you? Will you wait until the water is lapping at your feet?"
Every second, Americans throw away 700 plastic water bottles. That's enough to make two million fleece sweaters every day.
Last year, we threw away enough plastic water bottles to stretch around the Equator 109 times.
A water faucet that drips one drop every second will leak 165 gallons a month.
Every three months, Americans throw away enough aluminum to rebuild the entire US air fleet.
Recycling just one aluminum can saves enough energy to operate a TV for three hours.
Americans use almost 100 billion plastic bags every year. Their use is banned in several countries.
So save the world! Wings not required. What are you doing to help?
Keep flying--and don't just sit around saying it's terrible. Help!
~Cara
I read the first half of your blog about the oil spill and I agree with it all. Why is America so wasteful?
ReplyDeleteThen you went into Max Ride and I decided to skip it in case there were spoilers.