Layer of oil on the Gulf sea floor

by worldforallpeopleorg

An inch or two of oily sediment lies at the bottom of the Gulf.

"And in that layer, she finds recently dead shrimp, worms and other invertebrates."

Admittedly, dead worms aren't likely to headline the national news. But they can effectively symbolize the struggle between environmental stewardship and recklessness for profit.

Joye's findings so far have found oil in depths ranging from 300 to 4,000 feet. Shallower waters, in particular, are potentially important not just for life on the bottom but for the entire marine ecosystem.

"A lot of fish go down to the bottom and eat and then come back up," Hollander says. "And if all their food sources are derived from the bottom, then indeed you could have this impact."

Figuring all that out though, will probably take many years.

continued at Daily Kos....

How the media are missing the real drama of the Oil Spill

by Bill McKibben

When a well started spewing oil off Santa Barbara in 1969, it spurred the first Earth Day, which in turn launched the environmental movement and a fundamental questioning of the balance between humans and the rest of nature. It turned out, in other words, to be a real Moment.

continued at Daily Kos....

Oil & My Childhood Chesapeake Life

by LaniN

This is my first diary.  I'm a reader, not a writer.  But the Gulf disaster is haunting me.  I'm a child of the Chesapeake, with my roots going back thousands of years.  For what are we losing this magnificent world?  More polyester?  More big cars?  Our food chain is dying.  Our lives are ending.  For what, I keep asking.

continued at Daily Kos....

We Need A Dept of Cleaning Up

by J Orygun

The gulf oil crisis raises several distinct problems.  There's clearly a problem with regulating the drilling, that the government has to solve before another well gets drilled.  There's clearly a problem of an out-of-control wellhead that only a few drilling professionals have the tools and knowledge to plug.  But there's one more problem, which is NOT a "never seen before" problem: a massive oil spill. We had one in Valdez.  There was one in the gulf 30 years ago.  There was a small one a few years ago in SF bay.  Oil spills in water are not rare.  And they obviously don't just come from mismanaged drilling.  They come from mismanaged ships.  They come from collisions. And they could even come from an act of terrorism.  The only thing different about this one is the size. So what do we do when the oil hits the water?  We need treat it like the invasion of a foreign enemy, 'cuz that's what it is.  We need a government agency that is ready to go to work the day the next spill happens.  We need a fire department for oil spills.  We clearly don't have one.

continued at Daily Kos....

Gergen is Right About Oil in Gulf--Updated Thrice

by banger

Since this happened I've been commenting in various places that there seem to be no "there" there when it comes to this Administration. It has, as a crisis team, performed remarkably poorly. The Administrations response to this crisis in the Gulf of Mexico is stunning in its punyness as David Gergen points out in a CNN story. Although this disaster is not an existential threat, it could be argued that if the U.S. government had fought World War II in the same way it has fought the oil spill, we might well be speaking German now. I'm not a Gergen fan. He is, however and intelligent and engaged insider in Washington whose opinions reflect his milieu and counts for something.

continued at Daily Kos....