Meditation and Prayer Is All That's Left

The oil-soaked birds struggle in vain, as they die a slow death in horrible pain. For us, their lives they have helplessly given, so that cars fueled by gas can be so arrogantly driven.

 I'm not trying to bum people out, although I don't know how you can keep from being bummed after seeing pictures like this. I just don't want you to forget. The leak is not fixed. It's still dumping a million gallons of oil into the Gulf every day, non-stop.
I have talked to a few people in the oil business and they don't much care about the birds and marine life. They do care, however, about the people out of work from the exploratory wells Obama shut down. Out of all of the hundreds of wells in the Gulf, we're talking about 33 wells. That's all, just 33 exploratory wells. Well, I say, waa waa! You had better start looking for work in another field, or get a job on a rig that's already up and running. I know that sounds flippant, but that's the kind of language BP chief executive Tony Hayward understands.
I have a bunch of why's. Why, as a civilized populous, do we allow a company to drill thousands of feet below the ocean floor with no back-up plan to fix a problem? Should we allow people to continue to do this? What can we do to stop it? Why aren't our representatives representing our best interests?
Let's be realistic. This company and all of it's contractors have destroyed a good portion of the Gulf Coast for at least a generation. Depending on the weather patterns, it could end up destroying the entire Gulf and beyond. Because it's not over! It still gushes on.
I cry every time I see an oil-coated bird. Why aren't there people staged in areas where oil landfall is imminent, shooing away the birds? That would probably save some of them. Birds won't land where there is a ruckus.
If the idea of converting automobiles to ethanol is not realistic, because it would cost a few hundred dollars to convert your vehicle, then let's convert everything else, as a friend of mine suggested, and just have personal automobiles run on gasoline.
I'm headed to the beach tomorrow. Port Aransas TX. I won't see any evidence of oil there. And so I will thank God and the driving Source Energy of this planet. I will ask Him/Source to forgive those who have sullied the waters. And ask that He/Source heal the ocean, birds and sea life. And open the eyes of those ignorant and greedy so that they may stop this hole from hell from vomiting gas and sludge into the ocean, onto the shores and marshes of our coast.
CONSIDER ALL FORMS OF ALTERNATIVE ENERGY!!
http://www.permaculture.com/book_menu/195/231/323 

Cleaning the Birds and Wildlife Doesn't Work

Ok class. Let's review.
To confirm my last blog, according to the Associated Press, BP was in charge of putting together a clean up/recovery plan for the Exxon Valdez in the event of a spill. There's not much relevance to that at this point other than they didn't learn much from their mistakes.
More importantly, let's take a look at the environmental impacts from the Exxon Valdez and what we've learned, and what we might expect from the Gulf geyser.
The Exxon Valdez spill dumped 11 million gallons (270,000 barrels) of crude into Prince William Sound in 1989. The Gulf Geyser is dumping between 500,000 and 1 million gallons per day. The estimate was closer to the 1 million mark before the cap was installed.
The Exxon Valdez initially killed 250,000 seabirds, 2,800 sea otters, 300 harbor seals, 150 bald eagles, 22 killer whales, and billions of salmon and herring eggs. Despite cleanup efforts, oil was still present in a large area of  the Sound by 2001.

Ten years after the spill, only two species (the bald eagle and the sea otter) of the original list of twenty-eight directly affected fish and wildlife species, had been declared fully recovered.
According to Science Daily, the impact of the Exxon Valdez lasted much longer than expected. Scientists in Alaska have discovered that lingering oil from the spill is still being ingested by wildlife, more than 20 years after the disaster.
According to a published report by a number of scientists and agencies, oiled mussel beds, and other tidal shoreline habitats, will take an estimated 30 years to recover. Varieties of marine species now suffer higher mortality rates from ingesting invertebrates contaminated by the hidden oil and also contacted oil directly while digging up prey, still, today!
Probably the most disheartening piece of information I have come across was a piece recently released by Newser. The middle-term survival rate of oil-soaked birds is under 1 percent, according to a German biologist. She emphasized that cleaned and released birds often die a more painful death within days. She said it was better to kill them.
Other experts seem to back her claim. "Their instinct to clean is greater than their instinct to hunt," said one expert Silvia Gaus, "and as long as their feathers are dirty with oil, they won't eat."
A British study says the lifespan of a cleaned bird is seven days. The World Wildlife Federation added, "Birds, those that have been covered in oil and can still be caught, can no longer be helped," and the organization is "very reluctant to recommend cleaning."
This makes me cry.

My solution, let's convert our cars to Ethanol, made from sugar beets. The cost is only a couple hundred dollars. In fact, Conoco uses 10% Ethanol in their gas products here, in the United States, as do other companies. Let's end this dependency on oil to run our cars!
Read David Blume's book, Alcohol Can Be Gas, http://www.permaculture.com/book_menu/195/231/323
You can even purchase it at the bottom of my posts, on this page in my aStore, if you like.
Ethanol can be made like moonshine. It's legal, and you can even get a government credit for it. Do we REALLY want to continue doing this to our ecosystem? Please stop killing these innocent creatures!

BP In Charge Of Exxon Valdez Cleanup Too?

It has come to my attention that BP was put in charge of clean up for the Exxon Valdez in the event of an accident. And even after that, they did not have a plan in place for the Deepwater Horizon rig.
As soon as I research this, I'll be back with the information.

Question Authority

Well, I've always believed that if you're going to complain about the way something is, or is done, then you should offer up another solution, preferably a better one. I heard a few interesting, and amusing, remedies to the oil gusher in the Gulf. While some of them may not be viable, they are entertaining.
I, personally, would like to stuff the hole with Dick Cheney, since he deregulated offshore drilling. Now, I know that's not a viable option or solution. But I got nuthin'! And that sounds really good to me.
I have one friend that wants to plug the hole with Gemini men, she says, because their egos are so big that it wouldn't take very many of them to stop the leak.
I have another friend that says freeze their bank accounts and then let's see how fast they stop this leak. I really like that idea (unless it's the money that's being used to employ out of work fisherman who are cleaning up) and I think it's a viable option. What happened today on the stock market is a variation of that option in fact. BP stock fell losing almost 15% of its value which caused the Dow Jones to fall 113 points.
I've talked to a couple of friends who have worked on offshore rigs and I've read quite a few reports today. Most experts believe that this latest idea to cut the riser and cap the leak is not going to work for various reasons from too much pressure, to lack of o-rings, to the size of the cap. They all agree that it will make the leak worse, at the very least temporarily. Why are they trying this particular plan? Remind me again?
Folks, it's starting to appear like these guys are under so much pressure to stop this leak that they're just pulling ideas out of their ass without considering the vast economical and environmental impact it's going to have on the Gulf states, which I guarantee will translate across the country eventually.
I understand that Obama is "looking" at other solutions presented by other countries and experts. I don't think BP knows what to do and maybe it's time to CALL IN THE HELP!!
When they cut the crimp off of that pipe, it's going to cause the crude to come out at a faster rate. If they are unable to cap it, or if the cap blows off, then we're going to be dealing with double the amount of crude leaking into the Gulf until late August. And I don't have to remind anyone along the Gulf Coast that it's an El Nino hurricane season.
What has me so damn mad, other than obvious reasons, is that I feel so ineffective and helpless to do anything to stop or fix this. It makes me question the people who've run this country and their motives and agendas. And then I have to wonder, did the government have my best interest in mind when they deregulated offshore drilling?
We used to be able to hit the streets with protest signs and rally against this kind of lacking representation. But we lost some rights in the name of a handful of people securing their oil interests in the last administration.
Now, if you protest anything, you're subject to arrest and criminal charges as a non-patriot, or a terrorist, or a person of interest to be watched and listed. And the American people allowed this to happen because they quiver at the mere mention of "terrorists." If you "choose" to be stupid and complacent sheeple, then this is what you get. Don't let other people do your thinking for you. Question Authority.
I say, don't cut the pipe! The chances are slim that it will work. Let's solicit other ideas. And let's not make it any worse.