What Has Happened, And What We Are Facing Options

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Wow, we are CHUMPS (the public)

take the time to read this. It will send chills down your spine.
http://bklim.newsvine.com/_news/2010/07/30...eyond-patch-up-

[Bfishy]

Just as I have said all along, now that the oil is capped, they cant even find any to clean up. why? because the oceans are immense and however many millions of gallons of oil went into it have dispersed and wont harm squat. It was rain drops on the ocean. Bacteria will finish off what we don't see. Now, where it did wash ashore will be devastated for years but it too will heal in time. All the fish are not dead, the guy who went to the keys and said there were no fish was full of it. Plenty of fish, I know, I see them every day. I really believe this disaster was allowed to continue for as long as it did to get people even more against oil, the very thing that has propelled the human race to where we are now. Look around your house. If it wasn't made from a plant or animal, it was made at least in part, with petroleum and petroleum byproducts.

200,000 people are losing work right now because of the oil drilling ban in the gulf. This is not helping our economy. Until we have reliable alternate energy that is allowed to be used, oil is what we have. We are not running out, we just have not been allowed to drill where it is close to or even on shore. I say plop a drill in my back yard if you find oil there. We need cheap energy and forcing oil companies to go further and further off shore and drill in risky high pressure pockets of oil is not the way to go.

Now don't get me wrong, i was screaming my head off as this leak continued. Any oil leaking anywhere is bad. Bp was at fault, our government was at fault, there is plenty of blame to go around, but its not a reason to just abandon every well and stop using oil over night. There's nuclear, but environmentalists don't let us build plants even though they have a proven safety record. There's wind energy but the wind doesn't always blow, some wind farms never get built because they might kill birds, and some wind farms are sitting useless because environmentalists wont let power lines be run to them. We have solar, but the sun sets every day and environmentalists wont even let them put solar farms in the desert because it too hurts the environment. we have ethanol, but it takes just as much energy to get it as you get out of it and uses up precious food resources. Fact of the matter is, we are not quite ready to be weened off of oil yet. Someday we indeed need to move on to better cleaner sources but until we perfect them, oil is what we have.

We as humans will always have some sort of impact on our environment, we must work at reducing that impact, WITHOUT sending us back to the stone ages. Take a deep breath, we will be okay as long as government gets out of the American peoples way and let us do what we do best, INNOVATE!!!!

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Bfishy, if only you were right. Mathematics doesn't agree, though.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY

watch this, and then get back to me. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

now if this were only about YOUR life, then I would agree with you. But we have children.

The gulf oil thing is over, and the 1.9 million gallons of toxic poison they dumped in the gulf is gone, as is the millions of barrels of oil. Safe to swim again; it will have no affect on the fish. Or so BP wants you to believe.

sorry, i don't buy the mainstream media/BP/government party line. (just like the Volt that cost 40,000 dollars and doesn't have air-conditioning or heat is going to save the automobile industry). I see Chevy has cut down their projections from 40,000 to 10,000 units. Guess they don't believe in it, either.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/8/4...t-People-to-See

In May, Mother Nature Network blogger Karl Burkart received a tip from an anonymous fisherman-turned-BP contractor in the form of a distressed text message, describing a near-apocalyptic sight near the location of the sunken Deepwater Horizon -- fish, dolphins, rays, squid, whales, and thousands of birds -- "as far as the eye can see," dead and dying. According to his statement, which was later confirmed by another report from an individual working in the Gulf, whale carcasses were being shipped to a highly guarded location where they were processed for disposal.

CitizenGlobal Gulf News Desk received photos that matched the report and are being published on Karl's blog today. Local fisherman in Alabama report sighting tremendous numbers of dolphins, sharks, and fish moving in towards shore as the initial waves of oil and dispersant approached in June. Many third- and fourth-generation fisherman declared emphatically that they had never seen or heard of any similar event in the past. Scores of animals were fleeing the leading edge of toxic dispersant mixed with oil. Those not either caught in the toxic mixture and killed out at sea, or fortunate enough to be out in safe water beyond the Source, died as the water closed in, and they were left no safe harbor. The numbers of birds, fish, turtles, and mammals killed by the use of Corexit will never be known as the evidence strongly suggests that BP worked with the Coast Guard, the Department of Homeland Security, the FAA, private security contractors, and local law enforcement, all of which cooperated to conceal the operations disposing of the animals from the media and the public.

I still maintain that we will strip every useable element from this earth, and then kill one another to wrest just a little more. NOTHING mankind has done yet has led me to believe otherwise. In only fifty years we have destroyed 90% of the oceans fish and 75% of the plankton which we depend upon for the very air we breath (at least these are the governments figures).

[Bfishy]

you have watched too much Avatar. We wont need every last element on the planet. I myself have faith in human ingenuity. We will find a way to continue to move forward without eugenics. Interesting tidbit i came across was that old oil wells that dried up long ago are now producing oil again. The oil is a different geological age then the previous oil. What they are working on showing is that oil is NOT a fossil fuel and in fact is produced by heat and pressure deep in the earths crust. one scientist is getting methane gas WITHOUT any organics, just heat and pressure. Granted, even if it is shown that oil is not a fossil fuel, the earth does not make it as fast as we use it, or at least so it appears at this time. So yes, on our current path, someday in the far distant future it is possible to use it all up. I believe long before then we will have found our energy answer. These numbers you throw out just don't mesh up with what i see with my own eyes. I spend LOTS of time on or around the gulf and its bays since i can remember. There are lots of fish, some species even more then when i was a kid, redfish being one of them. They got so over fished, it was a real treat to catch one when i was a kid, now i see schools of hundreds of them tailing or cruising the flats. I agree we have the ability to do great harm to the planet, mostly to our own detriment, but i know we will advance enough to reduce the harm we do. The earth has survived massive volcano eruptions, meteor and comet impacts, nuclear explosions, global freezes and more. A few million gallons of oil and dispersant will disappear in the trillions beyond trillions of gallons of water in the gulf alone let alone all the water on the planet. Yes, while it was all lumped up in one spot it did great and very saddening damage. It hurts my soul to see all the life that did get effected by this but you will soon see, much like a cut on your skin, it will heal. no need to start wiping out humans or sterilizing us or restricting the amount of kids we can have. When you start going there, and start talking about collective rights or freedoms, we lose all individual freedoms and that's where true freedom exists.

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Bfishy, here are some sites you may care to look at to better educate yourself. What you see with your own eyes doesn't mesh up with the actual numbers. I don't know you, nor am I interested in debating something that is fact. However, for the sake of peace, I hope you are correct.

The argument about abiotic oil has been going on for years.
http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2005/11/4/15537/8056

technocopians who think that "they" are magically going to save use with "ingenuity" Who are "they"? The same people that brought us the Chevy Volt?

as long as government gets out of peoples way? If you live in the United States, you no longer have any rights. Do you remember how many people called to express their displeasure against the passage of the health-care bill? Did Congress listen? No! They passed the bill anyway, without even reading it. You should see what you gave up within those 2500 pages.

here's an interesting article I came across yesterday:
http://www.personalliberty.com/government/...he-rule-of-law/

read this carefully, as your life depends upon it:

Civilization as we know it is coming to an end soon. This is not the wacky proclamation of a doomsday cult, apocalypse bible prophecy sect, or conspiracy theory society. Rather, it is the scientific conclusion of the best paid, most widely-respected geologists, physicists, bankers, and investors in the world. These are rational, professional, conservative individuals who are absolutely terrified by a phenomenon known as global "Peak Oil."

http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/

With the exception of six people where I work, (one of them being the store director) not a single person believes there is anything wrong with the way we live, and when this is mentioned they become very hostile (LA LA LA LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU). JIT distribution is collapsing nationwide; it is already affecting the small town I live in. After five years of study of peak oil, depletion economics, etc. I have come to the conclusion that given our current education system (one of the worst in the worlds first world countries) that most people are incapable of actual thought. Our society is more geared to Dancing with the Stars, Americas Biggest Loser, Americas Got Talent, Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader? etc.

and the oil that gushed out from Macondo is less than 2 minutes consumption in the United States.

here are some more interesting sites:

Peak Oil News and Message Boards:
http://peakoil.com/open/the-archdruid-t58211.html

Monkeyfister:
http://monkeyfister.blogspot.com/

the Oil Drum:
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6407

Rigzone:
http://www.rigzone.com/news/incident.asp?inc_id=1

Florida Oil Spill Law:
http://www.floridaoilspilllaw.com/

Heres a pretty good article on how an offshore well is drilled:
http://www.treesfullofmoney.com/?p=1610

and lastly, how on earth can someone believe that we can have infinite growth (the very basis of our society) on a finite world? My 15 year old sees the idiocy of this.

best regards, Jay

ps I haven't seen avatar. Was it good?

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wow...the major news networks are all SCREAMING that the leak is capped, its all over, the waters clean, etc. BUT apparently the facts aren't jibbing with the tv.

from a blog on an oil site:
Xeluc said
Quote
Seems more and more likely everyday that they're trying to bury the story more than the well. With the gulf so screwed up, it will take a long time before independent researchers will even be able to locate any other leaks if they exist. Meanwhile Gov and BP says everything is peachy.

I'm noticing the same. "The leak is fixed. The oil is gone. The waters are fine, the seafood is tasty. The beaches are clean and all is well. The koolaid is cold and refreshing, here - have a glass, and do not worry your pretty little head about a thing."

The news links when one googles "static kill" are rife with "Whoopee, it is a success" headline linkys. But as recently as yesterday, the leaks appeared to be bigger than ever, even as BP claims success. http://www.floridaoilspilllaw.com/bp-turns...leaks-yet-video

and:

TPTB lied about the Persian Gulf Spill too. I suppose the lies get worse when profits are involved. Rather sickening.....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_War_oil_spill

. Despite the uncertainty surrounding the size of the spill, figures place it several times [6] the size (in gallons spilled) of the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

The New York Times reported that a 1993 study sponsored by UNESCO, Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and the United States found the spill did "little long-term damage": About half the oil evaporated, a million barrels were recovered and 2 million to 3 million barrels washed ashore, mainly in Saudi Arabia.[7]

More recent scientific studies have tended to disagree with this 1993 assessment. Marshlands and mud tidal flats continued to contain large quantities of oil, over ten years later, and full recovery is likely to take decades.

Dr. Jacqueline Michel, US geochemist (2010 interview – transcript of radio broadcast):[8]

The long term effects were very significant. There was no shoreline cleanup, essentially, over the 800 kilometers that the oil – - in Saudi Arabia. And so when we went back in to do quantitative survey in 2002 and 2003, there was a million cubic meters of oil sediment remained then 12 years after the spill.... [T]he oil penetrated much more deeply into the intertidal sediment than normal because those sediments there have a lot of crab burrows, and the oil penetrated deep, sometimes 30, 40 centimeters, you know a couple of feet, into the mud of these tidal flats. There’s no way to get it out now. So it has had long term impact.

Dr. Hans-Jörg Barth, German geographer (2001 research report):[9]

The study demonstrated that, in contrary to previously published reports e.g. already 1993 by UNEP, several coastal areas even in 2001 still show significant oil impact and in some places no recovery at all. The salt marshes which occur at almost 50% of the coastline show the heaviest impact compared to the other ecosystem types after 10 years. Completely recovered are the rocky shores and mangroves. Sand beaches are on the best way to complete recovery. The main reason for the delayed recovery of the salt marshes is the absence of physical energy (wave action) and the mostly anaerobic milieu of the oiled substrates. The latter is mostly caused by cyanobacteria which forms impermeable mats. In other cases tar crusts are responsible. The availability of oxygen is the most important criteria for oil degradation. Where oil degrades it was obvious that benthic intertidal fauna such as crabs re-colonise the destroyed habitats long before the halophytes. The most important paths of regeneration are the tidal channels and the adjacent areas. Full recovery of the salt marshes will certainly need some more decades.

well, I think we're a long way from "over" with this.....

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wow just read this comment on a blog about the plankton die-off:

quote:
How much more evidence does the idiotic public need for God's sake??!!

The public doesn't want to hear it. Never did, never will. There is no politically viable path to mitigation of the problem - whether we're addressing peak oil, global warming, plankton die-off, or population overshoot. The mass of people cannot understand - literally, lack the intellectual horsepower to understand. Many of those who can understand refuse to accept.

We are heading toward a cluster of events which will place our nation and civilization at grave risk. And, if the more dire scenarios are to be believed, than humans may come near to extinction. Or perhaps achieve that dubious distinction.

At this point, there's nothing any of us can do except observe. Perhaps we can make the road a little less arduous for ourselves and a few others. But the path has been chosen, and nothing will change it.

Acceptance has its benefits, among them some peace of mind. I'm glad I don't have children or grandchildren. My condolences to those who do.
unquote.

I've pretty much come to this conclusion, but was unable to put it in words. Now I see that wheat just went up, from four dollars a bushel last month to 8 dollars a bushel this month. Here we go.

[Bfishy]

Funny thing Bing is we do agree on some things. One, the healthcare bill is a disaster. Two, i know i have been losing rights, going back to Woodrow Wilson and FDR, and accelerated with Bush and even more so with Obummer. You are right about the population in some ways. Only so many of us can fit on the planet even if we were all shoulder to shoulder packed like sardines, there is a point where no more of us can physically fit on the planet. So who's job is it to decide who can have kids, how many you can have and so on? That type of thinking will bring death camps and genocide. I myself believe that nature will take care of our population problem at some point. (it wont be pretty) look at any population of animals that gets out of hand, disease ravages through the population killing off large numbers and leaving behind only the strong. It will happen someday to us. Someday we wont be able to find a cure or a vaccine for some strange virus that wipes out 2/3 of the planet. Maybe not in ours or even 2 or 3 or more generations from now, but it will happen.
I know that abiogenic petroleum formation is controversial. The scientist that i heard the interview from admitted it and also said he could ruin his career, but the guy has come up with hard evidence to support the theory now. Scientists tend to get stuck in ruts of collective thought and consensus sometimes. It usually takes a great event and a great man (or woman) to change the path of that thought. Just like man made global warming has theories on both sides. I'm not saying its fact right now, im just saying that here we have evidence showing one thing and it should be looked at further and not simply shrugged off because it doesn't fit an agenda.

Avatar was a great movie, I did notice that it tended to paint humans and capitalism in a negative light but I expect that from Hollywood. Visually stunning movie though without a doubt.

Curious to one thing Bing. The media has a leftist agenda, along with our president, that hates big oil and would jump on destroying the oil industries at any chance they get, so why on earth would they both work at covering up the spill and its ill effects? It would make much more sense for them to hammer this story till we all hated oil and never wanted to use anything that used or was made from it again.

I cant tell you how long people have been delivering all these doomsday scenarios, but every last one of them has passed without so much as a whimper. I do think we can destroy ourselves by crapping where we eat, but again, i have faith in humans, in Americans, to do what needs to be done and enable us to continue to move forward. The planet itself may wipe us out long before we do it to ourselves anyway. It just takes one mega volcano like Yellowstone to blow its top to cause global extinction for 90% of all life on the planet, not just us.

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Bfishy, I am in full agreement with EVERYTHING you said, except I didn't see Avatar. (my kids did, I think they may have it). I am sick at heart about reading about all this and am going to leave it now. I can't do a thing, (not sure I want to, I love the air conditioning and food). This isn't over, the aftereffects are sure to show themselves soon enough. We don't have to do a thing. The only comment I have is this:

quote:
Curious to one thing Bing. The media has a leftist agenda, along with our president, that hates big oil and would jump on destroying the oil industries at any chance they get, so why on earth would they both work at covering up the spill and its ill effects? It would make much more sense for them to hammer this story till we all hated oil and never wanted to use anything that used or was made from it again.
unquote.

AS I UNDERSTAND IT, per articles by rolling stone, etc, Big Oil and Goldman Sachs OWN our administration. BP was Obamas number one contributor, Goldman Sachs owns the company that makes corexit, etc. They have a decided agenda in minimizing the damage done by the oil gusher.

Now we have another tragedy; they are showing the funereal procession (I live in a small town) through town here in Burnet Texas on TV of officer Holbrooke killed in Afghanistan in a nine year old war that should never have been. (I live in a small town)

a friend who moved to Wharton, somewhere down by Houston, just came over and I was able to give her cuttings from penang peach, donald angus, and dwarf singapore pink. That is SOOOO much more rewarding. Best regards, Jay

edited to add I have five kids; three of my own and two adopted.

edited one more time to add:

if you want to know where my mindset is, go to this site:
http://www.malthusia.com/

[Bfishy]

Interesting stuff on the forum. Ill have to check it out more when i have time. I would recommend taking most of that stuff with a grain of salt, but it does make for good conversation.

As far as the spill goes, 1 volcano eruption spews more toxins into the air, land, and sea then this oil spill did. The earth can handle HUGE amounts of crap and fix itself in time. Also I would like to point out that at 210 million gallons a day it would take something like 470 years for the gulf spill to equal the purposeful spilling of oil that Saddam did in Iraq.

This guy reflects my feelings exactly. copied and pasted from here http://thomashager.net/2010/05/nature-vs-o...ls-nature-wins/

Nobody’s going to argue that oil spills — especially huge ones, like the Deepwater Horizon blowout in the Gulf of Mexico — are good things. They’re terrible things and they have tragic effects.

But take heart: Mother Nature, slowly but surely, has it handled.

Consider Ixtoc 1. It was the Gulf’s biggest, baddest oil spill ever, another offshore oil rig malfunctioning, blowing up, and releasing a gusher into the sea. Oil spewed for months, fouling beaches from Mexico through Texas, and threatening one of the world’s biggest shrimp fisheries. This was 1979 in the Gulf of Campeche, an ecological paradise off the coast of Yucatan. Ixtoc 1 released more than three times as much oil as Deepwater Horizon has to date (and it’s not the worst of the worst. The oil-into-water record belongs to Saddam Hussein, who ordered the destruction of the oil facilities in Kuwait and Iraq during the Gulf War, releasing unbelievable amounts of oil into the Persian Gulf).

Never heard of Ixtoc 1? Maybe that’s because of Mother Nature. When oil spills, nature disperses it, eats it, and buries it again. Yes, there was a dramatic and immediate effect on ecosystems in Mexico. But no, they were not cataclysmic. Within two years, the shrimp industry revived, according to this recent news story — one of the first to look to Ixtoc in order to understand the Deepwater Horizon tragedy.

Even the Gulf War oil release — by any measure the worst oil-spill disaster in history — did not have devastating long-term effects.

This is cause for hope, and a reminder that despite our mistakes, miscalculations, and greed, we are part of a living system that is much, much more powerful (and, thankfully, more forgiving) than we are.


Also I did a quick search on dire predictions that didnt come true and found one guy that had 10 listed for me which made life easy on my lazy butt. This is why I dont go into panic mode every time I hear the sky is falling.

Top Ten Science based predictions that didn’t come true:
10. “The earth’s crust does not move”- 19th through early 20th century accepted geological science. See Plate Tectonics

9. “The bomb will never go off. I speak as an expert in explosives.” — Admiral William Leahy, U.S. Atomic Bomb Project

8. “That virus is a pussycat.” — Dr. Peter Duesberg, molecular-biology professor at U.C. Berkeley, on HIV, 1988

7. “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” — Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943

6. “Radio has no future. Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible. X-rays will prove to be a hoax.” — William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, British scientist, 1899.

5. “There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will.” — Albert Einstein, 1932

4. “Space travel is bunk.” — Sir Harold Spencer Jones, Astronomer Royal of the UK, 1957 (two weeks later Sputnik orbited the Earth).

3. “If I had thought about it, I wouldn’t have done the experiment. The literature was full of examples that said you can’t do this.” — Spencer Silver on the work that led to the unique adhesives for 3-M “Post-It” Notepads.

2. “Stomach ulcers are caused by stress” — accepted medical diagnosis, until Dr. Marshall proved that H. pylori caused gastric inflammation by deliberately infecting himself with the bacterium.

1. “Telltale signs are everywhere —from the unexpected persistence and thickness of pack ice in the waters around Iceland to the southward migration of a warmth-loving creature like the armadillo from the Midwest. Since the 1940s the mean global temperature has dropped about 2.7° F.” — Climatologist George J. Kukla of Columbia University in Time Magazine’s June 24th, 1975 article Another Ice Age?

So the next time you hear about worldwide crop failure, rising sea levels, species extinction, or “climate grief” you might want to remember that just being an expert, or even having a consensus of experts, doesn’t necessarily mean that a claim is true.

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On May 3rd, 2009 Paul Hawken delivered this commencement address at the University of Portland:

When I was invited to give this speech, I was asked if I could give a
simple short talk that was “direct, naked, taut, honest, passionate,
lean, shivering, startling, and graceful.” Boy, no pressure there.

But let’s begin with the startling part. Hey, Class of 2009: you are
going to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on earth
at a time when every living system is declining, and the rate of decline
is accelerating. Kind of a mind-boggling situation ~ but not one
peer-reviewed paper published in the last thirty years can refute that
statement.

Basically, the earth needs a new operating system, you are the
programmers, and we need it within a few decades.

This planet came with a set of operating instructions, but we seem to
have misplaced them. Important rules like don’t poison the water, soil,
or air, and don’t let the earth get overcrowded, and don’t touch the
thermostat have been broken. Buckminster Fuller said that spaceship
earth was so ingeniously designed that no one has a clue that we are on
one, flying through the universe at a million miles per hour, with no
need for seatbelts, lots of room in coach, and really good food – but
all that is changing.

There is invisible writing on the back of the diploma you will receive,
and in case you didn’t bring lemon juice to de code it, I can tell you
what it says: YOU ARE BRILLIANT, AND THE EARTH IS HIRING. The earth
couldn’t afford to send any recruiters or limos to your school. It sent
you rain, sunsets, ripe cherries, night blooming jasmine, and that
unbelievably cute person you are dating. Take the hint. And here’s the
deal: Forget that this task of planet-saving is not possible in the time
required. Don’t be put off by people who know what is not possible. Do
what needs to be done, and check to see if it was impossible only after
you are done.

When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer
is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening
on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand data. But if you
meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of
the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse. What I see
everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair,
power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of
grace, justice, and beauty to this world. The poet Adrienne Rich wrote,
"So much has been destroyed I have cast my lot with those who, age after
age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world."
There could be no better description. Humanity is coalescing. It is
reconstituting the world, and the action is taking place in schoolrooms,
farms, jungles, villages, campuses, companies, refuge camps, deserts,
fisheries, and slums.

You join a multitude of caring people. No one knows how many groups and
organizations are working on the most salient issues of our day: climate
change, poverty, deforestation, peace, water, hunger, conservation,
human rights, and more. This is the largest movement the world has ever
seen.

Rather than control, it seeks connection. Rather than dominance, it
strives to disperse concentrations of power. Like Mercy Corps, it works
behind the scenes and gets the job done. Large as it is, no one knows
the true size of this movement. It provides hope, support, and meaning
to billions of people in the world. Its clout resides in idea, not in
force. It is made up of teachers, children, peasants, businesspeople,
rappers, organic farmers, nuns, artists, government workers, fisherfolk,
engineers, students, incorrigible writers, weeping Muslims, concerned
mothers, poets, doctors without borders, grieving Christians, street
musicians, the President of the United States of America, and as the
writer David James Duncan would say, the Creator, the One who loves us
all in such a huge way.

There is a rabbinical teaching that says if the world is ending and the
Messiah arrives, first plant a tree, and then see if the story is true.
Inspiration is not garnered from the litanies of what may befall us; it
resides in humanity’s willingness to restore, redress, reform, rebuild,
recover, reimagine, and reconsider. "One day you finally knew what you
had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their
bad advice," is Mary Oliver’s description of moving away from the
profane toward a deep sense of connectedness to the living world.

Millions of people are working on behalf of strangers, even if the
evening news is usually about the death of strangers. This kindness of
strangers has religious, even mythic origins, and very specific
eighteenth-century roots. Abolitionists were the first people to create
a national and global movement to defend the rights of those they did
not know. Until that time, no group had filed a grievance except on
behalf of itself. The founders of this movement were largely unknown –
Granville Clark, Thomas Clarkson, Josiah Wedgwood – and their goal was
ridiculous on the face of it: at that time three out of four people in
the world were enslaved. Enslaving each other was what human beings had
done for ages. And the abolitionist movement was greeted with
incredulity. Conservative spokesmen ridiculed the abolitionists as
liberals, progressives, do-gooders, meddlers, and activists. They were
told they would ruin the economy and drive England into poverty. But for
the first time in history a group of people organized themselves to help
people they would never know, from whom they would never receive direct
or indirect benefit. And today tens of millions of people do this every
day. It is called the world of non-profits, civil society, schools,
social entrepreneurship, and non-governmental organizations, of
companies who place social and environmental justice at the top of their
strategic goals. The scope and scale of this effort is unparalleled in
history.

The living world is not "out there" somewhere, but in your heart. What
do we know about life? In the words of biologist Janine Benyus, life
creates the conditions that are conducive to life. I can think of no
better motto for a future economy. We have tens of thousands of
abandoned homes without people and tens of thousands of abandoned people
without homes. We have failed bankers advising failed regulators on how
to save failed assets. Think about this: we are the only species on this
planet without full employment. Brilliant. We have an economy that tells
us that it is cheaper to destroy earth in real time than to renew,
restore, and sustain it. You can print money to bail out a bank but you
can’t print life to bail out a planet. At present we are stealing the
future, selling it in the present, and calling it gross domestic
product. We can just as easily have an economy that is based on healing
the future instead of stealing it. We can either create assets for the
future or take the assets of the future. One is called restoration and
the other exploitation. And whenever we exploit the earth we exploit
people and cause untold suffering. Working for the earth is not a way to
get rich, it is a way to be rich.

The first living cell came into being nearly 40 million centuries ago,
and its direct descendants are in all of our bloodstreams. Literally you
are breathing molecules this very second that were inhaled by Moses,
Mother Teresa, and Bono. We are vastly interconnected. Our fates are
inseparable. We are here because the dream of every cell is to become
two cells. In each of you are one quadrillion cells, 90 percent of which
are not human cells. Your body is a community, and without those other
microorganisms you would perish in hours. Each human cell has 400
billion molecules conducting millions of processes between trillions of
atoms. The total cellular activity in one human body is staggering: one
septillion actions at any one moment, a one with twenty-four zeros after
it. In a millisecond, our body has undergone ten times more processes
than there are stars in the universe – exactly what Charles Darwin
foretold when he said science would discover that each living creature
was a "little universe, formed of a host of self-propagating organisms,
inconceivably minute and as numerous as the stars of heaven."

So I have two questions for you all: First, can you feel your body? Stop
for a moment. Feel your body. One septillion activities going on
simultaneously, and your body does this so well you are free to ignore
it, and wonder instead when this speech will end. Second question: who
is in charge of your body? Who is managing those molecules? Hopefully
not a political party. Life is creating the conditions that are
conducive to life inside you, just as in all of nature. What I want you
to imagine is that collectively humanity is evincing a 20 deep innate
wisdom in coming together to heal the wounds and insults of the past.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came
out once every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of course.
The world would become religious overnight. We would be ecstatic,
delirious, made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead the stars come
out every night, and we watch television.

This extraordinary time when we are globally aware of each other and the
multiple dangers that threaten civilization has never happened, not in a
thousand years, not in ten thousand years. Each of us is as complex and
beautiful as all the stars in the universe. We have done great things
and we have gone way off course in terms of honoring creation. You are
graduating to the most amazing, challenging, stupefying challenge ever
bequested to any generation. The generations before you failed. They
didn’t stay up all night. They got distracted and lost sight of the fact
that life is a miracle every moment of your existence. Nature beckons
you to be on her side. You couldn’t ask for a better boss. The most
unrealistic person in the world is the cynic, not the dreamer.
Hopefulness only makes sense when it doesn’t make sense to be hopeful.
This is your century. Take it and run as if your life depends on it."

[bing]

apparently this thing is still going on, toxic chemicals appearing up and down gulf coast. Hetty, article about corexit in Naples:
http://www.floridaoilspilllaw.com/

Naples:
http://www.floridaoilspilllaw.com/naples-a...om-corexit-9527