Posted By:
Dawn Kairns
Author of MAGGIE the dog who changed my life
Twitter: themaggiebook
MAGGIE: the dog who changed my life
Click photo to visit dawnkairns.com
Showing posts with label oil spill. Show all posts
Showing posts with label oil spill. Show all posts
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Feeling Powerless About the Gulf Oil Spill? 10 Ways You Can Make a Difference
Many of us feel so powerless to help or change how the continuing oil spill catastrophe in the Gulf is damaging wildlife, the environment, and people's lives. So anything we might be able to do may ease a tiny part of our helplessness is important. On June 13 I posted "How You Can Help Gulf Animals Impacted by BP Oil Spill -- Or Why Can't We?"
Beth Buczynski posted the following on the Care 2 blog the next day. I want to share part of her post with you here, too. To read Beth's original post on Care 2 go to http://www.care2.com/causes/environment/blog/oil-spill-10-ways-you-can-help/:
"Even if you can't physically make it to the Gulf to lend a hand, here are 10 important ways you can make a difference to those who are on the ground fighting to keep up with this tragedy:
1. Boycott BP
Yes, this catastrophe could have happened to any petroleum company, but no matter which corporation is ultimately at fault, consumers MUST communicate their disapproval with the most powerful weapon they have: their pocketbooks. BP brands to avoid include Castrol, Arco, Aral, am/pm, Amoco, Wild Bean Cafe, and Safeway gas. For more news on the boycott already in progress, visit the Boycott BP page on Facebook.
2. Tell the Government, "Enough is enough!"
The only way to help prevent future disasters it to let our politicians know that off-shore oil drilling is dangerous, and we want it to stop. Sign the Care2 petition telling President Obama to reconsider his plan to expand offshore drilling and invest in clean energy resources instead. It's always powerful to contact your representatives directly, too. Help Oceana reach its goal to gather 500,000 names on a petition to stop offshore drilling permanently.
3. Shave Your Head
Ok, maybe just trimming off a few inches is enough. Matter of Trust, an ecological charity based in San Francisco, has a hair mat, oil-spill program that uses human hair to produce super-absorbent mats that can be used to clean up messes including oil spills (pet hair works too!).
Since putting out the call for hair to help soak up the BP oil spill, Matter of Trust has collected 400,000 pounds of hair and sent it to addresses along the Gulf Coast, but more is always needed.
4. Purchase Dawn Dishwashing Detergent
If you remember the tragic 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill of 1989 you likely remember that the chemical composition of Dawn detergent makes it perfect for animal rescue. Purchasing a bottle or two of Dawn dishwashing liquid at your local grocery store gives you two ways to help: a) you can enter the bottle's activation code at Dawn-Dish.com triggering a $1 donation to wildlife conservation efforts from the Marine Mammal Center and the International Bird Rescue Research Center, and b) you can donate your bottle of Dawn directly to the Gulf clean-up efforts through the Facebook page Help Us Help the Gulf Wildlife.
5. Donate Essential Supplies For Volunteers
Suncoast Seabird Sanctuary, which was a significant workforce in the disastrous Tampa Bay 1993 oil spill and has experienced avian care professionals on-staff desperately needs donations of kennels, towels, gas gift cards, paper towels, and bottled water to assist their avian hospital in treating and rehabilitating wildlife that has been affected by the oil spill.
6. Support Those Saving The Wildlife
The National Wildlife Federation has set up mobile giving services to support their work in the Gulf Coast. Donors can send a text message with the code "WILDLIFE" to 20222 to automatically give a $10 donation to help wildlife affected by the oil spill.
The International Bird Rescue Research Center (IBRRC) lets you support the 16 members of their Oil Spill Response Team, as well as other non-profit organizations working in the region, by "donating, becoming a member or adopting a bird."
7. Become A Hero
Sign up with The National Audubon Society to get trained and volunteer to help local birds.
Register through OilSpillVolunteers.com to volunteer or join a cleanup organization.
Volunteer with Global Green, an organization that plans to spend the coming months working to protect injured wildlife and lobbying Congress to enforce tougher regulations on the oil and coal industries.
8. Save A Fisherman
The mission of the Gulf Relief Foundation is to provide relief to the fishing community of the Gulf Coast and their families, and to address the long-term challenge of restoring and protecting America's coastal wetlands.
Text "GULFAID 10" to 27138 to donate $10 to Gulf Aid. Replace "10" with the number of US dollars (no $ sign) you'd like to pledge, donate as little or as much as you like. You can also visit Faux Pas Prints for the latest official GulfAid.org merchandise. Portions of the proceeds go to the Gulf Relief Foundation.
9. Join Hands
Begun in Florida, Hands Across the Sand is an international movement concerned with protection of our coastal economies, oceans, marine wildlife, fishing industry and coastal military missions. Cities all across the world are pledging to stage peaceful demonstrations on June 26th during which thousands of people will join hands to convey a simple, yet powerful message: NO to Offshore Oil Drilling, YES to Clean Energy. Learn more about how to organize or join an event in your area.
10. Get Connected and Inspired
Join the Facebook group 1 Million Strong Against Offshore Drilling. Check out the action page for more suggestions of how to lend your voice to the anti-drilling movement."
Posted By:
Dawn Kairns
Author of MAGGIE the dog who changed my life
Twitter: themaggiebook
Monday, June 7, 2010
Entire Species Could Be Lost Due to Oil Spill
I saw this on Care2 and thought you'd like it as well. Care2 is the largest and most trusted information and action site for people who care to make a difference in their lives and the world. Care2.com
by Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger
posted by: Nicole Nuss June 5, 2010
A cap placed over a severed pipe is siphoning some oil from the broken BP well in the Gulf Coast, the company said today. The company's CEO said this morning on CBS that it was possible that this fix could capture up to 90 percent of the oil, but that it will take 24 to 48 hours to understand how well this solution is working. Adm. Thad Allen, the former Coast Guard chief and oil spill inci
dent commander, called the cap "only a temporary and partial fix."
Despite the capping procedure, it became clear this week that the onrush of oil from the BP Deepwater Horizon rig will not cease any time soon. Even in the best case scenario, thousands of barrels of oil will still flow into the ocean. Destruction is already spreading along the Gulf Coast, and before the oil stops leaking, species might be extinct and industries destroyed.
In the coming months -- it's not clear how many -- oil will continue to pollute the Gulf of Mexico. BP and the Obama administration are talking about August as the end of this crisis, but other experts have projected that the spill could last until Christmas.
As Justin Elliott reports for TPMMuckraker, BP told the government it could handle a spill much larger than this one. In the initial exploration plan for the well, BP claimed "it was prepared to respond to a blowout flowing at 300,000 barrels per day -- as much as 25 times the rate of the current spill," Elliott writes. BP cannot, it turns out, respond to a blowout flowing less than 20,000 barrels per day, and the consequences for the Gulf communities are only beginning to emerge. The first casualty will be Gulf ecosystem and its inhabitants. The second casualty will be the livelihood of Gulf communities that have depended on fish, shrimp, and oysters for survival.
How long?
In 1979, another company released torrents of oil in the Gulf of Mexico, in much shallower waters than where BP was drilling. As Rachel Slajda writes for TPMMuckeraker, the clean-up methods the oil industry relied on three decades ago are similar to the technology BP is trying now. The Ixtoc spill was comparatively easy to address; yet it still took 10 months to stop.
During that spill, the nearest state, Texas, had two months to prepare for the oil to hit shore, and still "1,421 birds were found with oiled feathers and feet," Slajda writes. The fishing industry escaped much damage, but the tourism industry lost 7-10 percent of its business.
Dead fish
In Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida, and other states affected by this spill, fish, fowl, restaurateurs, and oystermen won't get off easy. As Care2 reports, the National Wildlife Federation has already documented the deaths of more than 150 threatened or endangered sea turtles and of 316 seabirds ("mostly brown pelicans and northern gannets").
And BP is trying to keep images of the animal victims away from the public. Julia Whitty, reporting from Louisiana, writes for Mother Jones:
All up and down this shoreline angry and scared people told me some scary and infuriating stories in the past few days. I heard about the the dead and dying wildlife we're never going to see because the victims are being carted away to early responder ships and to inaccessible buildings onshore. I've seen some of those photographs which can't be shown (according to BP's new orders) of dolphins swimming through thick gunky oil, struggling sperm whales trailing wakes a mile long in thick gunky oil, dead jellyfish in gunky oil.
Extinction
The impact of the oil spill goes beyond those individual bodies, though. As Inter Press Service reports, environmentalists and scientists "are beginning to reckon with the reality of a massive annihilation of sea creatures and wildlife."
"You could potentially lose whole species, have extinction events," Michael Blum, a Tulane ecology professor told IPS. "Brown pelicans were just taken off the endangered species list. On this threshold, a big dieback and mortality event, they would be pushed back into a situation where they could be endangered." Also at Care2, Jay Holcomb, Executive Director of the International Bird Rescue Research Center, demonstrates a brown pelican being de-oiled, her feathers shampooed with Dawn detergent, her head and pouch cleaned with Q-tips.
Livelihoods destroyed
For generations, Gulf Coast residents made their living by fishing. Their fishing grounds are now off-limits. Some have found short-term work with BP fighting the oil. But those jobs come with new hazards.
Some clean-up workers have reported dizziness, nausea, and shortness of breath that they think comes from exposure to chemical dispersants. BP is not providing safety gear that would clean the air workers breathe and has threatened to fire clean-up workers who bring their own, Colorlines reports.
In the long-term, Gulf Coast fishermen may have no source of income and will have to abandon their homes and professions.
"It's a way of life,"shrimper Dean Blachard told Democracy Now!'s Amy Goodman this week. "They destroyed a way of life, a way of life that if you take it away too long, you can't learn this in a school. This is passed from generation to generation, so the daddy teaches the son, and the son teaches his son. And, you know, once the chain is broke, you're never going to get it back."
It's understandable that the residents of the Gulf Coast might want BP to pay for the damage. At The Nation, Chris Hayes reveals that BP could be on the hook for mitigation, the cash value of injured property, and for punitive damages-all beyond the cost of cleanup itself. But, as Zygmunt J. B. Plater, a law professor who chaired a legal task force on the Exxon Valdez spill, explains:
"In Alaska, most of the damage was suffered by communities who had their quality of life destroyed, and there's no way to put a dollar value on that."
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint.
Posted By:
Dawn Kairns
Author of MAGGIE the dog who changed my life
Website: www.dawnkairns.com
Blog: Dawn Kairns and Maggie the Dog
Twitter: themaggiebook
by Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger
posted by: Nicole Nuss June 5, 2010
A cap placed over a severed pipe is siphoning some oil from the broken BP well in the Gulf Coast, the company said today. The company's CEO said this morning on CBS that it was possible that this fix could capture up to 90 percent of the oil, but that it will take 24 to 48 hours to understand how well this solution is working. Adm. Thad Allen, the former Coast Guard chief and oil spill inci
dent commander, called the cap "only a temporary and partial fix."
Despite the capping procedure, it became clear this week that the onrush of oil from the BP Deepwater Horizon rig will not cease any time soon. Even in the best case scenario, thousands of barrels of oil will still flow into the ocean. Destruction is already spreading along the Gulf Coast, and before the oil stops leaking, species might be extinct and industries destroyed.
In the coming months -- it's not clear how many -- oil will continue to pollute the Gulf of Mexico. BP and the Obama administration are talking about August as the end of this crisis, but other experts have projected that the spill could last until Christmas.
As Justin Elliott reports for TPMMuckraker, BP told the government it could handle a spill much larger than this one. In the initial exploration plan for the well, BP claimed "it was prepared to respond to a blowout flowing at 300,000 barrels per day -- as much as 25 times the rate of the current spill," Elliott writes. BP cannot, it turns out, respond to a blowout flowing less than 20,000 barrels per day, and the consequences for the Gulf communities are only beginning to emerge. The first casualty will be Gulf ecosystem and its inhabitants. The second casualty will be the livelihood of Gulf communities that have depended on fish, shrimp, and oysters for survival.
How long?
In 1979, another company released torrents of oil in the Gulf of Mexico, in much shallower waters than where BP was drilling. As Rachel Slajda writes for TPMMuckeraker, the clean-up methods the oil industry relied on three decades ago are similar to the technology BP is trying now. The Ixtoc spill was comparatively easy to address; yet it still took 10 months to stop.
During that spill, the nearest state, Texas, had two months to prepare for the oil to hit shore, and still "1,421 birds were found with oiled feathers and feet," Slajda writes. The fishing industry escaped much damage, but the tourism industry lost 7-10 percent of its business.
Dead fish
In Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida, and other states affected by this spill, fish, fowl, restaurateurs, and oystermen won't get off easy. As Care2 reports, the National Wildlife Federation has already documented the deaths of more than 150 threatened or endangered sea turtles and of 316 seabirds ("mostly brown pelicans and northern gannets").
And BP is trying to keep images of the animal victims away from the public. Julia Whitty, reporting from Louisiana, writes for Mother Jones:
All up and down this shoreline angry and scared people told me some scary and infuriating stories in the past few days. I heard about the the dead and dying wildlife we're never going to see because the victims are being carted away to early responder ships and to inaccessible buildings onshore. I've seen some of those photographs which can't be shown (according to BP's new orders) of dolphins swimming through thick gunky oil, struggling sperm whales trailing wakes a mile long in thick gunky oil, dead jellyfish in gunky oil.
Extinction
The impact of the oil spill goes beyond those individual bodies, though. As Inter Press Service reports, environmentalists and scientists "are beginning to reckon with the reality of a massive annihilation of sea creatures and wildlife."
"You could potentially lose whole species, have extinction events," Michael Blum, a Tulane ecology professor told IPS. "Brown pelicans were just taken off the endangered species list. On this threshold, a big dieback and mortality event, they would be pushed back into a situation where they could be endangered." Also at Care2, Jay Holcomb, Executive Director of the International Bird Rescue Research Center, demonstrates a brown pelican being de-oiled, her feathers shampooed with Dawn detergent, her head and pouch cleaned with Q-tips.
Livelihoods destroyed
For generations, Gulf Coast residents made their living by fishing. Their fishing grounds are now off-limits. Some have found short-term work with BP fighting the oil. But those jobs come with new hazards.
Some clean-up workers have reported dizziness, nausea, and shortness of breath that they think comes from exposure to chemical dispersants. BP is not providing safety gear that would clean the air workers breathe and has threatened to fire clean-up workers who bring their own, Colorlines reports.
In the long-term, Gulf Coast fishermen may have no source of income and will have to abandon their homes and professions.
"It's a way of life,"shrimper Dean Blachard told Democracy Now!'s Amy Goodman this week. "They destroyed a way of life, a way of life that if you take it away too long, you can't learn this in a school. This is passed from generation to generation, so the daddy teaches the son, and the son teaches his son. And, you know, once the chain is broke, you're never going to get it back."
It's understandable that the residents of the Gulf Coast might want BP to pay for the damage. At The Nation, Chris Hayes reveals that BP could be on the hook for mitigation, the cash value of injured property, and for punitive damages-all beyond the cost of cleanup itself. But, as Zygmunt J. B. Plater, a law professor who chaired a legal task force on the Exxon Valdez spill, explains:
"In Alaska, most of the damage was suffered by communities who had their quality of life destroyed, and there's no way to put a dollar value on that."
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint.
Posted By:
Dawn Kairns
Author of MAGGIE the dog who changed my life
Blog: Dawn Kairns and Maggie the Dog
Twitter: themaggiebook
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