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Our Ocean in Revery and Neglect
This month has been both a special time for our planet's ocean and one of great distress. June 7th kicked off a week full of events, celebrating Capital Hill Ocean Week, World Ocean Day (June 8th) and my grandfather's 100th birthday commemoration dive, end-capping the week on June 11th. Throughout the week, the beauty, majesty and fragility of our water world were center pieces of discussions and of revery.
During our June 11th dive on the "Grand Canglouer" (location of my grandfather's first expedition in the early 50s) off Marseille, my father Jean-Michel, sister Celine, and I, were honored to be submerged with some of the original crew of Calypso such as our dear friend, Albert Falco. Not only was this an extraordinary moment for us as a family, but also one that was an intimate communion with the "undersea world".
Churning in the water column, resembling a giant ink cloud from a gigantic octopus, a dark shroud has enveloped our aquatic arena since April 20th, 2010 and its vision has become all too familiar, thanks to hundreds of Web sites and blogs showing the live feed. The Gulf oil spill, a catastrophe of epic proportions, has commanded the world's attention for 62+ days straight now. Not only has the sea-floor-gusher not been halted, the current flow estimates are a phenomenal 60,000 barrels of crude spewing freely into the Gulf every 24-hours. Now that's daunting.
People are frightened, angry, frustrated and feel helpless in the face of such a monstrous disaster. Confronting such stress, mud slinging and finger pointing seems commonplace. Although there is a significant list of people who should be held accountable, the danger is that we are getting distracted from actually fixing the problem first. The longer we stumble upon ourselves and argue, the worse the long-term impact on our environment and on our future will be.
Aside from actually "plugging the hole," a huge long-term cleanup effort is mandatory. And no, chemical dispersants are not the answer. We must roll up our sleeves and mop up the mess before it suffocates and poisons not only the whole of the Gulf Coast, but the Caribbean, the North American Atlantic Coast and eventually Western European shores.
There are responders from Government, NGOs, private sectors, and the public, who are pitching in to help with clean up efforts. While their significant efforts are most definitely helping, the scale of the spill requires a ten-fold increase if we are to fathom a brighter future.
Adoption of new technologies such as EcoSphere's filtration units can be a great asset to help eliminate the oil from the water column with the least negative impact. Documenting the effects of BP crude on aquatic and avian wildlife (the Ocean Futures team has been filming in the Gulf since April) is also paramount to informing the public about any progress and as a basis for future restoration efforts (such as with the Plant A Fish initiatives). And while there are many people wanting to volunteer to help clean up animals and beaches alike, unfortunately there is still a huge lack of training facilities to enlist these could-be responders.
With almost 9,000 oil and gas platforms surrounding U.S. coastal waters, it's not a matter of if this happens again but when.
We must end our 100-year-old addiction to fossil fuels.
One thing is for sure, we will be dealing with the consequences of the BP Gulf oil spill for decades to come. How long we will be dealing with those consequences is dependent on what we can accomplish now, not what we will do tomorrow. Nature will recover from our abuse, eventually. It is up to us if we want to recover with her or be relegated to a footnote in her history.
Even though the environmental and economic challenges we are facing are of monumental proportions, human beings are capable of creating miracles when pressed for them. We know what we need to do.
Now, it's a matter of learning to live with the planet rather than living on it.
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11 Comments so far
Show All"Had you lived like the Tribes then you Smart People wouldn't have to learn to live with the Planet instead of living upon the planet."
Maybe I idealize the life of the Tribes too much, but since a very young person I have longed to live as I imagine the Tribes to have lived. I tried in my own way but I am surrounded, inundated, and saturated with a polluted, out of balance, insane civilization. I live by a river that once had millions of salmon spawning each spring. The river edges are dotted with ancient campsites. If you look closely enough you can find pieces of stone tools and darkened earth where the campfires were. I often sit and imagine the salmon, and the people, laughing, playing. It must have been an exciting time when the salmon returned.
Thank you for you comments 'old Indian'. I wish you, and all of us, well. I think darker times may be ahead and I only hope that enough of the sane ones survive to carry on the ways of balance.
Thanks for the comments, but I still can't help believing that one person, or a small group of people can make a diff. For example, I wonder what would have happened back in the day, if someone could have traveled to all the tribes and really explain the exploitative nature of the europeans, and set up a legal assistance group that would discourage most treaties.
The question that I have that still hasn’t been answered is why the President is refusing HELP? I have heard that 13 Nations have offered to help and they have all been refused. WHY!!!!!
As an American who spent time in LA and the gulf states and came to love the area very much, I want every thing thrown into this. YES, let’s try new things that never have been tried before. If someone has a Green method the feds should be saying YES and trying everything that has a chance to work. This is not something that our President and Congress and the Political Parties should be playing their stupid politcal games to score points.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This is going on not only on what is happening in the gulf but the problems with the AZ border and protecting AZ Law Enforcement from being KILLED.
When you have AZ Law Enforcement being threated by the Drug Lords in Mexico if they stop them in any way from crossing the border to bring their violence to not only Mexicans but Americans who live here in AZ and Both Sides have turned this into a racial issue and hijacking the real issue of CRIME then you see the results of the two political parties playing their political games with each other and CONTINUE TO DO NOTHING!!!! Our federal government is failing and needs to gets it act together and start PUTING THIS NATION FIRST OVER POLITICAL PARTY or we will crumble into the dust.
Now you have them playing the same political games being played with this disaster. Why did the feds order them to stop digging for sand and building their sand bars to collect the oil so it doesn’t go into the wetlands? No reason given, just told they have to stop. Why is President Obama saying NO to all the HELP offered? WE NEED ALL THE HELP WE CAN GET AND HE IS SAYING NO TO ALL OF IT. Countries have offered to send skimmers to skim the oil and he has said NO. WHY? Is it so they can push through their cap and trade bill?
John Adams and George Washington believed that America in order to survive had to be one nation who worked side by side together as one and one of the reasons that Adams felt concerned about political parties being such a strong force in American politics was he feard the country would be divided. He has proven to be right. Adams was one of the great American Patriots who I think sometimes is overlooked for his wisdom and deep love for this country.
I continue to pray, but from what I see going on, I don’t think we are learning the lesson that we need to be learning so we can change and move forward on the path to a better future.
Adams had some good things to say, but he was also a right-wing jerk. Heard of the alien and sedition acts? Look to Madison and Jefferson for real democracy.
Yes, the nation is divided. Reich-wingers like Lee "deathbed confessional" Atwater and his protege Rove perfected the art. Divide, screw with voter registration/machines and Conquer. Reich-wingers continue it today - they will destroy the environment and nation if that's what it takes to 'win'.
Start making a diff by looking in the mirror. Prayer isn't going to do jack to stop an oil spill or help the country.
Yes, Cap and Trade sucks, but only b/c we can't put a tax directly on non-renewables. Why? Reich-wingers will scream murder. Not to mention Neo-liberals.
We haven't had an actual liberal president since JFK.
The article seems like tasteless pablum to me. Cap the well and clean the ocean? Is that all the Cousteau family has to say? First, how the hell are you going to clean the ocean? Sounds like something BP might say. The ocean is not going to be cleaned. We don't know how to do it and the job is too big.
You can't separate this catastrophe from corporate malfeasance. It will happen over and over again unless the odious system that produced this leak is destroyed. I wonder if the Cousteau Society is not in bed with too many corporations so that it cannot speak forthrightly about this matter. From reading this article, I am not going to put much stock into their "solutions."
BP SILVER LINING
Sadly, it requires calamities such as the BP gusher, and 9/11, to force measures that were so obviously needed beforehand.
This event underscores the crucial need, not only to enforce drilling safety, but to reduce our dangerous fossil fuel dependence through conservation and renewable energy development--which industry has obstructed through decades of lobbying, misinformation, & fabricated science, with help from cooperative administrations, defaulting legislators, and an apathetic populace.
This environmental disaster provides our president with special opportunities to detooth the energy cartels, and forge ahead with these vital reform measures.
If he eludes this mandate, history will judge him harshly.
"Nature will recover from our abuse, eventually." This is an untrue statement. Around 17 or 18 years ago, I saw a documentary by Jacques Cousteau in which Cousteau revisited many of the areas of the sea that he visited throughout his long career, and he lamented that most of them, which had teamed with sea life back in the 1950s when he first dived in them, were lifeless and dead in the early 1990s. He said we had about a decade to change our ways or else the oceans will be irrevocably damaged. We are past the point of no return now. While the entire Gulf is being presently destroyed, an American judge has blocked a 6 month moratorium on deep sea drilling. Most people would rather destroy the planet rather than go look for a new job.