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04 May 2010

Once Upon a Time the Gulf was Blue


While people are complaining about immigration, bemoaning high taxes, warning against big government, and hatin’ on Obama, the Gulf of Mexico has become an ecological disaster zone. Our insatiable appetite for dirty, poisonous fossil fuels has polluted our air, our soil and our water. If this wasn’t bad news enough to deal with, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) thinks it could get worse.

A leaked confidential NOAA document reveals that the Coast Guard now fears the well could become an unchecked gusher shooting millions of gallons of oil per day into the Gulf.

The United States Coast Guard is preparing for a “worst case scenario” and no one really knows how much or how fast the oil will be released into the Gulf of Mexico if the pipe at the well head fails completely. On average, a controlled well can produce up to 30,000 barrels per day. NOAA spokesperson, said that an unchecked flow of oil from the well head could be on the magnitude of 10 times greater than the 5,000 barrels per day that is now spewing into the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico. That’s 50,000 barrels or 2.1 million gallons a day.

Already the oil spill is a disaster for the fish, birds, crustaceans and all other wildlife in the Gulf coastal regions of the United States. This tragedy may develop into something that will make the Gulf coast uninhabitable for decades to come.

What is BP doing about this tragedy? Today, gasoline prices jumped from $2.81 per gallon to $3.11 per gallon. I suppose WE will be paying for the clean up and their fines, not just in dollars for gasoline but in the loss of our fragile wetlands and unimaginable habitat and economic losses.

Drill Baby! Drill rhymes with Kill Baby! Kill – our wetlands, our fishing industry in the Gulf, the wildlife of the Gulf Coast, and the hope that my little boy will ever see the Gulf of Mexico the way I saw it – blue and teaming with life.



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1 comment:

  1. You are right the Gulf coast is no longer the blue watery gem it was before the spill. We are all going to pay for this accident by years and years of increased prices for seafood, crab and the all important shrimp farming. The people that got impacted the worst by the worst hurricane of the century Miss Katrina herself will lose more revenue as the blue ocean fills with black oil and fishing grows impossible. There will be a huge die off. The ones that I blame for the inception of this mess are the big three automotive giants. It’s they who kept the buying public in love with their gas guzzlers and kept steam vehicles out of the market place . I’m not big on electric. It has to come a long way before I’ll ever think of buying one. Years ago the Stanley Steamer was the king of the early nineteen hundreds roads. Why can’t the techie geniuses who hack our computers for relief of sheer ennui, please use their genius IQ’s to make hydro, or water our next smart auto fuel? .

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