One of the major reasons that this is a problem is because oil, after it is released into the ocean, actually has the potential to remain there forever. There was once a spill in England, many years ago, where the sand on the beaches is still black because of the oil. Not only will the actual beaches be damaged, the ecosystems of the Gulf of Mexico will be forever changed for the species living there.
The National Marine Fishing Service has closed 54,000 square miles of the Gulf to commercial fishing. The problem is that much of the Gulf still remains open. This will affect the fish that come out of that area. I urge all of you to please be careful of the seafood that you are eating. The oil is rounding the coast of florida and will eventually pass through the waterways of the entire world. However small amounts of oil they may be, there will be oil in every water system.
There are many organizations that are attempting to give aid to lessen this disaster. The Monterey Bay Aquarium and the Oiled Wildlife Care Network are providing aid at the moment. I hope that you look into the good work that they are doing in this situation and donate to their cause.
In addition, I hope that you see the true problem behind this. In the Gulf of Mexico, there have been many oil spills. Most of them have been due to concreting issues, as this one is, and many of those concreting jobs have been done by Halliburton. You should all write emails or letters to both Halliburton and BP telling them that this is a major disaster and something needs to be done in the future to prevent others that are of equal or greater volume.
I am not going to go into the details of the attempted fixes of this problem, but if you have any questions, I would be glad to answer them. Just know that this has turned into an extreme issue, and everyone should be concerned.
I recently received a question as to whether I thought that there were any other options to stop the oil besides drilling more wells. I think that at the moment drilling more wells is the most viable, efficient, and cost effective option, though there are of course others. My philosophy is that if the drilling was not in place to begin with, there would be no spill. Of course, the world cannot just go fossil fuel free, but we can drastically reduce the amount of drilling and use that money to research viable alternative energy systems. I recently visited a college, College of the Atlantic, that ran completely off of the amount of energy used in a single family home. They do this completely off of the burning of biomass pellets, and that college is completely carbon neutral. They run an amazing environmentally sustainable college.
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