to scrub or not to scrub...

...that is the question. Should we be using thousands of gallons of water, bottles of Dawn dish soap, and countless hours of labor to wash off the animals coated in oil from our latest drilling disaster? It cost $32,000 per animal during the Exxon Valdez spill; what does it cost now? Silvia Gaus, a German biologist, argues that we should simply kill the animals instead. I see her point: it's likely that they will not survive because of the amount of oil they've already ingested, and it's even more likely that once released, they'll simply become coated in oil again.

However, I can't quite wrap my heart around killing the animals. I guess that's the animal lover in me. As Nicole Belle says in the article, we should use this as an opportunity to teach conservation and environmentalism, and to put a moratorium on off-shore drilling. It's not just the heart-wrenching pictures of birds covered in oil that we should be concerned about. We've covered an entire coastal ecosystem in crude oil, from which it may not ever recover. It's not only the brown pelicans, which have been brought back from near-extinction; it's the entire habitat that has been destroyed. We can clean off all the birds and turtles, but it's not going to do any good because we're just sending them back to a dead ocean and coastline.

This brings up the economic effect of the oil spill--and how we got to this situation in the first place. There is a confusing bit of terminology that needs to be cleared up. Energy independence does not equal alternative energy. The reason we have disasters like this is because we are so focused on energy independence instead of alternative energy sources. The sole focus has been reducing the amount of oil the USA imports from Saudi Arabia and the Middle East. Remember the debates on off-shore drilling and opening up ANWR to drilling and the oil sand reserves that came up during the 2008 elections? That was energy independence, not alternative energy. That's not creative thinking-it just continues our dependence on fossil fuels, albeit ones on our own soil. Alternative energy is photovoltaic, hydroelectric, geothermal, wind...and yes, nuclear [that's another can of worms for another time].

We're so busy thinking of the birds covered in oil, that we don't think about the non-cuddly animals--invertebrates like shrimp and oysters, the fish. These are the creatures that eat, breathe, and sleep directly in the ocean, and now, directly in the oil. They are also the livelihood of many coastal residents. You don't have to be a genius to figure out that fish and shrimp coated in crude oil equals dead fish and shrimp and no income for the fishers of the Gulf Coast.

This is not only an environmental disaster, but an economic and humanitarian one as well. The Obama administration needs to step up, BP, Deepwater, and Halliburton need to step up, and we as citizens need to step up. Boycotting BP gas stations doesn't really help, in fact, it hurts the families that own the stations--and the chance that you are still buying gasoline produced from BP wells is highly likely. The gasoline sold under the BP name is only called BP because of certain additives. Remember that places like Woodman's, Walmart, and Sam's Club that have gas stations have to buy their gasoline from some oil company, be it Shell, ExxonMobil, or yes, BP.

What can you do that will truly help? Write to your congresspeople and emphasize the need for energy independence through alternative energy. Decrease your fossil fuel consumption. Give up your air conditioner and unplug your appliances when not using them. Drive a hybrid! Support green job creation.

peace and love,

m