Environmental Glance
Although the Coast Guard had trained for the possibility of cleaning up a disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, it had never anticipated that oil would spread across such a broad area and break up into hundreds of thousands of patches as the current spill has done, the commander heading the federal response to the spill said Monday.
“It’s the breadth and complexity of the disaggregation of the oil” that is now posing the greatest clean-up challenge, the commander, Adm. Thad W. Allen, said at a news conference at the White House.
A powerful lobbying organisation representing agribusiness interests helped draft a key government report that has been attacked by environmentalists for heavily favouring the arguments of the genetically modified food industry.
But what most people don’t know is that the active ingredient of the toxic chemical dispersant, which is up to 60% by volume, being sprayed by BP to fight the Gulf oil spill is a is a neurotoxin pesticide that is acutely toxic to both human and aquatic life, causes cancer, causes damage to internal organs such as the liver and kidneys simply by absorbing it through the skin and may cause reproductive side effects.
Their disappearance has caused alarm throughout Europe and North America where campaigners have blamed agricultural pesticides, climate change and the advent of genetically modified crops for what is now known as 'colony collapse disorder.' Britain has seen a 15 per cent decline in its bee population in the last two years and shrinking numbers has led to a rise in thefts of hives.
"This spill will be lasting for years if not decades," said Doug Inkley, senior scientist at the National Wildlife Federation. Some of the immediate effects of a spill are obvious -- witness the gut-wrenching images of soaked and suffocating seabirds in the gulf.
You want a solution BP- Hire me. Put me in charge and I'll get it done. Even better- hire me to consult the guy in charge- put every resource available to stop this leak now. I am a risk, reliability, and safety consultant for NASA with over 10 years experience. I think a bunch of monkeys on LSD could come up with better solutions than I've heard coming from BP. I have heard for 10 years that off-shore drilling is safe and the oil companies have better technologies than NASA. I have also heard that this couldn't happen. Please hire me and I will sign a non-disclosure agreement and I will eat my hat if after a month with my help this leak has not stopped.
New videos show more clearly than ever how BP, with little resistance from the Coast Guard or other federal agencies, kept the public in the dark about just how bad things were beneath the surface of the Gulf of Mexico.
