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Wall St. & the Environment

The worst is yet to come

Does anyone think, this morning, that the debt ceiling crisis has been "solved?"

I'm no political analyst and it's going to take me (and the rest of the country) some time to figure out exactly how bad the pending deal is going to be for poor, working class and middle class people of this country.  But I got a big hint this morning of where we're headed next during CNN's interview of Sen. John McCain.


McCain mentioned that as a way to stimulate the economy and get businesses investing, he'd like to see a two year moratorium on all government regulations.

Following is a list of some of the federal agencies and bureaus that would be affected by McCain's plan.  Take a look and use your imagination: Just how might the robber baron corporations exploit lack of regulations, both those that currently exist and those that might be proposed?


Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection, Bureau of Prisons, Commission on Civil Rights, Council on Environmental Quality, Department of Agriculture,
Department of Energy, Department of Health and Human Services,Department of Labor, Environmental Protection Agency, Equal Employment Opportunity Division, Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity, Federal Aviation Administration, Federal Maritime Commission, Federal Trade Commission, Fish and Wildlife Service, Food and Drug Administration,Food Safety and Inspection Service, Housing and Urban Development, Justice Department, Labor Department,Marine Mammal Commission, Mine Safety and Health Administration, National AIDS Policy Office, National Park Service, National Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Public and Indian Housing, Veterans Health Administration.

Well, I can give you a hint: as of last Friday, 39 anti-environmental riders were attached to the 2012 spending bill for the Interior Department and the Environmental Protection Agency.  If passed, they would mean that for a year: no greenhouse gas regulations, no new auto efficiency regulations,  no limits on mountaintop coal removal, no strengthening of protections for wetlands, no labeling the toxic ash from coal-fired power plants as hazardous waste-- and much more.  You can read some details in a Sunday Editorial in the New York Times.

So what are we to do?  Our options on a federal level may be limited at the moment, but as a lifelong community organizer, at least one course of action is clear to me: fight for local control on every front of this war against us.  Build our strength and our skills to challenge, from the bottom up, the corporate control over our lives.  Tell the truth!  Oppose illegitimate authority!  Start taking back our power-- at the next street corner, at the steps of city hall, at our state capitals.  And do it now.

Only after the last tree has been cut down.
Only after the last river has been poisoned.
Only after the last fish has been caught.
Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten.

                                           ~ Cree saying

Stooges for the rich

I've been so tied up with the fall-out and next steps from  Tuesday's biomass air permit hrearing that I've only kept half an ear to the national news. I've had time to glance at the headlines and know that our country is  headed for a government shut-down, but only tonight did I pay attention to some of the riders on policy Republicans are insisting be passed with the budget.

A chief target is the Environmental Protection Agency, which would be forbidden to regulate greenhouse gasses-- costs too many jobs, Republicans say.  Of course this put me in mind of Tuesday night's trade union vocal support support for Palmer Renewable Energy's biomass proposal.  Maybe those guys would agree with the Republicans on this one.

Here we are in the middle of the biggest upward transfer of wealth in eighty years and yet there are people out there thinking that making rich people richer is going to be good for them.  Maybe they haven't thought about it that way; the typical Tea Party member is a sheep who cries out for tax cuts and smaller government and then won't be able to get her aging mother into adult day care and her kids into a decent school.  No problem for the rich, though.

Poor and working class people don't think that way.  That doesn't mean we have all that much class consciousness-- hell, poor people would love to be rich-- but our expectations have gotten very low, as low as our economic ranking.  We got pushed down the ladder back in the 80's and 90's and have never accumulated any wealth to speak of in a lifetime of work..  Many poor people under forty don't know that times have ever been different.  We're so numb from assaults we hardly even feel it anymore.

I sat in a meeting today that is trying to promote a campaign to increase state revenue by returning to a higher previous income tax rate with substantial personal exemptions for the bottom 60%.  We spent a good bit of time talking about messaging and finding the right way to convey to the public that essential services are at risk-- firefighters, teachers, nurses, et cetera.

Meanwhile I'm wondering why we aren't out there telling the truth to people: the rich are stealing our lives!  They don't care that they ruin our environment, consign our children to mediocrity, shorten our days.

And they don't even need the money.

Environmental justice: so far, just words on paper

Recently I've been thinking about Lois Gibbs. Remember her and Love Canal? In 1978 Lois found out that her child's school-- in fact, her whole neighborhood-- was built on Occidental Petroluem's toxic waste dump. Three solid years of community organizing eventually got then-President Carter to relocate 900 families from her community. That gives me a little hope. We're only a year and a half into our organizing here in Springfield, Massachusetts to stop construction of a biomass incinerator. The tough part is we're doing everything right and so far, it hasn't seemed to make a difference-- maybe that's just the way it goes until we win. We do have quite a few more cards up our sleeve. Nothing, from lawsuits and lobbying to direct action and civil disobedience, is off the table.

On Friday, we got the bad news from the Massachusetts Environmental Protection Agency (oxymoron) that the agency is not going to require a full Environmental Impact Report (EIR) of Palmer Renewable Energy's incinerator proposal-- this in spite of more than 450 comments submitted by area residents asking for the full study. You can read the decision here. This could put the proposal on a very fast track-- I think they only need an air permit from the state to start breaking ground-- that and the continued approval of the Springfield City Council.

OK, I'm scared and fighting mad. Our group, Stop Toxic Incineration in Springfield, isn't against this plant simply because of some intangible though legitimate fear of global warming. We're talking about our quality of life-- indeed our very lives themselves.. One in seven children in Springfield has asthma. Our kids' asthma rate is higher than Worcester and Boston, and 65% higher than the state average. We know that air pollution affects everyone, especially those with heart and lung disease. Hospital admissions climb on bad air days. And a new study from Boston Children's Hospital finds a strong correlation between air pollution and and an increase in Type 2 Diabetes, even when all other factors are accounted for and even when the pollution is within EPA guidelines and acceptable limits..

And herein lies the problem: "Acceptable limits" are not the same as safe limits; what's acceptable to the state doesn't mean people won't get sick in Springfield. I got the bad news about no EIR from David Cash, Assistant Secretary for Policy in the Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs. He kept talking about how the pollution from the plant-- which is undisputed-- was within acceptable threshholds, did not violate regulations, blah blah blah, and besides that, the developer intend to give $2 million to the city, mostly for "mitigation strategies!"

And what is a mitigation strategy, you might ask? That's where the developers get to make your child sick while paying for heath education for somebody else's child. It's supposed to all come out in the wash. But even if it were true that the negative health impacts from this plant could be offset by two million bucks, which I don't believe for a minute, we have no power over which children and adults get sicker and which get better. Hey, we don't live our lives on paper and in statistics, we're real people here.

Cash said I could ask him any questions I liked, but I have emailed him three times with these two questions and so far have had no response:

• Forgetting about allowable limits, regulations, etc., can you say unequivocally that this plant will cause no harm to anyone who lives in the Springfield area? Yes or no.
• If the answer to the first question is no, can you say unequivocally that any negative health impact will be entirely offset by PRE's mitigation strategy? Yes or no.

One issue MEPA clearly doesn't have a handle on is the cumulative effect of pollution. Stopping biomass incinerators isn't just a Springfield fight; residents of Greenfield and Russell have been fighting off plants, too. And it's not just Massachusetts-- tonight we heard from a group in Crawford County, Pennsylvania, which is fighting a plan by the same developers to burn 900 tons of tires a day to produce energy! Check out Crawford Area Residents for the Environment. The woman who contacted us from their group said that looking at our group's website was like looking in the mirror.

So what do we do next? We're looking at some legal strategies, but our big focus for the moment is on the Springfield City Council, which has the power to stop this plant by revoking its original permit. I've heard from several councilors, as well as from Mayor Sarno, that it's all in the state's hands. Well, the state has dropped the ball. I wrote about the last, very disappointing city council meeting, but the next meeting, on December 13, will be significant if not decisive. City Councilor Mike Fenton and several others are sponsoring a resolution calling for a public hearing, but at this point, with PRE now on the fast track, I think we're going to need something a lot stronger, something that actually stops PRE from breaking ground before the end of December.

In June of 2009, maybe fifty people (most in the city administration) knew about PRE's incinerator proposal. Now thousands of people know, and 99.9% oppose it. But now is not the time to oppose the plant just in your head. Call city hall at 787-6000 and ask for the mayor's. Call your ward councilor and all the at-large councilors-- you can get their numbers on the city council's webpage. Call Helen Caulton-Harris, Health and Human Services Director, at 787-6740, and tell her to find a way to stop this. Call Secretary of Environmental and Energy's Ian Bowles' office-- whosae decision it was nmot to require an environmental impact report, at. 617.626.1000. And Call the Governor's office-- 617.725.4005, 888.870.7770 (in state).

Most important, turn up at City Council on Monday, December 13, and let your councilors know it's time to stand up for the people of Springfield. And if you want to come to our planning meetings, let me know. The more of us fighting, the more likely we are to win.

One million brown bats dead

Wired Science has an update on the White Nose Syndrome that is decimating the brown bat population in New England and elsewhere.    I first wrote about this a year and a half ago and the news isn't getting any better.  More than one million bats in 14 states and two Canadian provinces now report infestation.  New York has lost more than 90% of their brown bat population.

Bats get a bad rap.  They eat tremendous amounts of insects and help pollinate plants.  And really, they are a sight to behold at sunset.  Check out this amazing video from from Austin, Texas.

Help stop Vermont Yankee

Greenpeace has an online petition to Entergy, telling the big company to shut down Vermont Yankee.
the people in Vermont don't want this aging plant to continue to operate, especially as it continues to have problems leaking radioactive material into the environment.  Earlier this month, the plant reopened after a spill of radioactive water. 

The Shut It Down Affinity Group will keep on organizing and keep on getting arrested until the plant is closed.  Their most recent action was in September and they're due back in court on November 23rd.  Good friend and Arise member Ellen Graves is part of this affinity group, as well as two Vermonters, Nina Swaim, 72, of Sharon and Martha Hennessey, 55, of Weathersfield and Massachusetts residents Paki Wieland, 67, and Frances Crowe, 91, of Northampton; Hattie Nestel, 71, and Marcia Gagliardi, 62, of Athol. I thought I'd posted about them previously, but looking back, it was actually in the Arise newsletter , not here.

So feast your eyes on these wonderful women with their wonderful tee shirts, and then take action to support their work.  They're doing it for all of us.

Did we kill the incinerator?

I won't hold my breath just yet, but there's a good possibility we have finally stopped Palmer Renewable Energy's biomass incinerator.

A quick recap: more than two years ago,  Palmer Renewable Energy made a proposal to Springfield City Council and the East Springfield Neighborhood Council about the wonderful benefits of their energy-producing incinerator.  Both councils fell for it-- city council liked the jobs and the the taxes; the neighborhood council liked the half million in "community benefits" PRE would contribute to the neighborhood.

It took about eight months for some of us in the community to find out about the plant, and, as soon as we educated ourselves about the pros and cons, we were against it.  Springfield's air quality is bad enough already, why make it worse?  Why have more kids with asthma and more adults with lung and heart disease? We formed a group, Stop Toxic Incineration in Springfield, and turned out more than 300 people at a public hearing to oppose the state giranting an air permit..  We got the state to agree to a health impact assessment for Springfield (still to happen).  We pushed the mayor, we pushed the city council, we held forums, we flyered the community, you name it, we did it.

A couple of months ago, PRE made a move that 1) I think they felt was necessary and 2) I think they thought would help get their plant approved: they decided not to burn primarily construction and demolition debris, but instead to burn wood trimmings.  I think they didn't want to wait 6 months for the state to conduct a study on the impact of burning C & D.

Instead, their decision opened doors for us.  PRE had to file an amended permit, which means we could submit comments on the Notice of Project Change to the state, and more than 400 of us did.  PRE has to go back before city council, which means we could let the new council know that people don't want this incinerator.  Through dint of our hard work, seven, possibly eight councilors have now expressed opposition to the plant and will be letting PRE know that when PRE returns to the council. .  And PRE had to go back to the East Springfield Neighborhood Council, where people in the neighborhood now know a lot more about the dangers of the plant than they did when the neighborhood council first voted approval.

When our group found out that PRE had to go back to East Springfield for approval, we asked Kathy Brown if we could get on the neighborhood council's agenda before PRE.  We are set to present our case on December 7.

Then we found out, from an East Springfield resident, that PRE was appearing before the neighborhood council this month, this past Tuesday!!  One of our members called Kathy Brown and was told that the East Springfield Neighborhood Council had already voted against PRE's new proposal.  And why hadn't they told us?  Five STIS members went to the meeting anyway, flyered the attendees and debated PRE executives and lawyer.

Now, it's been my understanding that this project can't move forward without the approval of the East Springfield Neighborhood Council.  So is the project dead?  Or will  PRE find a way around this vote?  I've put a call into City Soliciter Ed Pikula, but haven't heard back yet.  But is this the end for PRE?


Photo from Shawnrozzi's photostream at Flickr.

Plastic State of Mind

This is so cool. Made by GreenSangha and New Message Media from California, it was released the same day that the LA County Board of Supervisors vote in favor of a plastic bag ban. Please pass it along!

Toxic Toys R Us

Jeez, as if our kids aren't under enough assault as it is...Here's an easy action from Friends of the Earth:

In 2008, Toys R Us promised to reduce PVC plastic, phthalates, and lead in children's and infant’s toys. But the fact of the matter is that Toys R Us has not kept its promise. It has failed to label toxics in its toys and has failed to get PVC, the poison plastic, out of the toys it sells. Independent product testing has confirmed that Toys R Us is selling toys made with PVC. Chemicals released in PVC’s lifecycle have been linked to chronic diseases in children, impaired child development and birth defects, cancer, disruption of the endocrine system, reproductive impairment and immune system suppression. There is no safe way to manufacture, use or dispose of PVC products. As the largest specialized toy retailer in America, with more than 800 stores nationwide, Toys R Us has the economic power to eliminate toxics from the toy supply chain entirely. Photo from Alan Cleaver's photostream at Flickr.

1,000 postcards delivered - will city councilors get the message?

Megan Jenny from Toxics Action Center, me from Arise, Ward 3 City Councilor Melvin Edwards, STIS member Jesse Lederman from the McKnight Neighborhood Youth Council, Betty Agin and her grandson from the Springfield Health Disparities Project.

Springfield resident and STIS member John Miller

Today Stop Toxic Incineration in Springfield (STIS) held a rally and press conference on the steps of City Hall and then delivered more than a thousand postcards to Springfield, MA city councilors.  The message?  Hold a public hearing to consider grounds for REVOKING Palmer Penewable Energy's permit for an incinerator in Springfield.

Three days of intensive flyering brought Ward 4 Councilor E. Henry Twiggs and Ward 1 Councilor Zaida Luna firmly into the "opposed" category-- that is, if Palmer's permit was before the council today, they'd vote against it.  We never got a definitive answer from Michael Fenton, James Ferrera, Jose Tosado and Tom Ashe, and, in spite of calls, emails and a special mailing, we never heard back at all from Kateri Walsh and Clodo Concepcion.  Tim Rooke requested that I convey my information to City Council Aide Bob Arieti, and that Bob would convey it to him.  Still, we're inching toward a majority.  I hope Springfield voters remember who is responsive to his/her constituents and who isn't.

Great photos of the event, thanks to Megan Jenny and her crew from the Toxics Action Center.

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Theft of local power forces new anti-incinerator strategy

Last week, with little fanfare, Gov. Patrick signed into law the Permit Extension Act, which gives an automatic two-year extension to virtually every municipal and state permit filed for the last two years.

The rationale for this law is that given the economic downturn, new enterprises which are struggling to find start-up funds should not have to redo the permit process while they put their financing together.  A worthy goal, yes?  But what does this loss of local power mean in practical terms?

In Springfield MA, those of us who've been fighting Palmer Renewable Energy's proposal for an energy and toxic air-producing incinerator have been looking forward to the expiration of its land use permit.  PRE would have had to go back before City Council to seek a good faith extension before October 15, 2010, and we've been telling City Council not to renew their permit.  Now councilors don't have to make that tough decision, because the state has made it for them.

So what's next?  We are now asking City Council to REVOKE PRE's permit for good cause.  We want City Council to hold a public hearing to explore grounds for revocation.

I've already heard from a few city councilors who seem nervous about this idea.  Is it because we're asking them to do something they actually have the power to do?  And just what constitutes "good cause?"

Well, let's have the hearing and find out!  As far as I'm concerned, any proposal that plans to add a ton of lead to the city's air should never have been granted a permit in the first place.

Stop Toxic Incineration in Springfield has already collected more than 1,000 postcards to our city councilors demanding a public hearing to consider revocation.  Tomorrow at 11 a.m., we'll be on the steps of City Hall for  press conference-- and then we'll deliver our postcards to the City Council office. Come on down and join us.  Want some postcards for your neighborhood or civic organization?  all 413 734-4948 and we'll be happy to get them to you.

Climate change legislation dead for now

 Three of the four lead editorials in the New York Times this morning bemoan the death of climate change legislation in Congress for this year.  I've been somewhat torn between the position of "Pass the bill, it's better than nothing" and "The bill is lousy, why institutionalize bad policy?"

Lee Wasserman's editorial comes the closest to explaining why the bill died.  His fourth point is the one that hit most home to me-- ma7ybe because it's the one point activists can do something to change:

Thread No. 4: The public sits it out. American history has few examples of presidents or Congresses upending entrenched interests without public pressure forcing their hand. Teddy Roosevelt is on Mount Rushmore for a reason.
Citizens wouldn’t support an approach they couldn’t understand to solve a problem our leaders refused to acknowledge. Even the earth’s flagging ability to support life as we know it couldn’t stir a public outcry. The loudest voices insisted that leaders in Washington do nothing.
They obliged.

We need an analysis that can place such apparently disparate pieces of our lives as the cost of good food, the prevalence of McDonald's and Burger King, lack of jobs and public transportation, winter heating costs, the upsurge in asthma and the BP oil spill into a single picture.  We've got work to do.

Photo from Squiffy's House of Fun.

New England Climate Summer

This week bicyclers from Students for a Just and Stable Future passed through Springfield on their New England Climate Summer tour.  We got them over to Gardening the Community and hooked them up with the Springfield Institute for a short bike tour of the city's North End.

On Thursday, they gave a presentation on climate change at the Forest Park Library and showed the following short film.  I'm going to watch it several times more until I really understand the feedback mechanisms that are bringing our climate so close to the tipping point.

Hope to see a lot more of these folks next year!

Hiatus for lobsters?

The Boston Globe is reporting today that a multistate commission will be deciding whether to implement  Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission will be recommending a five year ban on lobster fishing from south of Cape Cod to the southern edge of North Carolina.  The ban was recommended back in April by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission.  Without such a ban, the commission says, the lobster population may go into permanent decline.

 It's not just lobsters (and those who make their living catching them) that are in trouble, though.  In 2006, the Science News Blog posted:  

Ocean Fish Depletion by 2048?

Reuters reports that a shocking study published in Science found that ocean life and seafood could be depleted by as early as 2048. The scientific data also indicates that marine biodiversity has already crashed by as much as 29% since 1960.

In an analysis of scientific data going back to the 1960s and historical records over a thousand years, the researchers found that marine biodiversity -- the variety of ocean fish, shellfish, birds, plants and micro-organisms -- has declined dramatically, with 29 percent of species already in collapse.

Extending this pattern into the future, the scientists calculated that by 2048 all species would be in collapse, which the researchers defined as having catches decline 90 percent from the maximum catch.

This applies to all species, from mussels and clams to tuna and swordfish, said Boris Worm, lead author of the study, which was published in the current edition of the journal Science.

Ocean mammals, including seals, killer whales and dolphins, are also affected.

"Whether we looked at tide pools or studies over the entire world's ocean, we saw the same picture emerging," Worm said in a statement. "In losing species we lose the productivity and stability of entire ecosystems. I was shocked and disturbed by how consistent these trends are -- beyond anything we suspected."

If you're a member of Costco, you should know that Costco sells "Red List" fish-- those fish species which are already at the depleted levels from which they can't recover.  There's a campaign to get Costco to stop this practice and to correctly label their fish so consumers know what they're getting and from where.   There's a petition top right-hand corner to ask Costco to use its massive buying power to leverage positive change in our oceans.  Please sign.

25 thousand barrels of oil seen in a new way

The man who made this did so before the Gulf catastrophe began. 

The Windmill Farmer

You can find out more about the animator, Joaquin Baldwin, at his site.


Thanks for the tip, Boing Boing!

One tree at a time

We had a little tree growing in front of Arise last year, but one day, it was gone, cut down-- a casualty of the State St. Corridor renovation.  We were told that in the spring, we'd get another little tree-- not the same one, of course.  The ghost of our original little tree  lingered above the sidewalk-- and in my mind-- all winter.

This spring I watched trees and flowers being planted up and down State St.-- trees in the median strips, lavender bushes on the slope outside STCC's iron fence.  Then, one day a month ago, I came into work to discover that the previously grassy strip between the sidewalk and the curb had been paved with black tar.

Trees and grass everywhere I looked!-- in front of Burger King, the closed Kavanagh's building, the median strip-- but not in front of our little strip of storefronts, which house a Black-owned clothing alteration and tee-shirt shop, a Latino-owned recording studio and music store, a storefront evangelical church, a Vietnamese-owned nail salon, a Chinese restaurant, a Turkish-owned pizza shop-- and, of course, Arise.

"What are we, too ghetto to get grass and trees?" I asked myself-- and started my phone calls to get to the bottom of this story.  First I was told by the city that it was a state plan, and I'd have to get my question answered by one of several state employees.  No calls were returned over several days.  Then finally I was sent back to the city, to Dept. of Public Works Director Al Chwalak.

Al told me that the tar was only temporary, that eventually the tar would be replaced by brick.

"And what about our tree?" I asked.

"There's no room for a tree," he said.  "The strip is smaller since we widened the street."

"And you know that for sure?"

Long pause.

"I'd have to check with the city forester," Al said.

Now, I'd already called the city forester, Ed Casey, and he hadn't called me back.  Maybe a call from Al would get a better response.

Then I was away for a week, and when I called Al on my return, he told me that the forester hadn't called him back, but he'd try Ed again.  He also mentioned that city employees would be walking up State St. on Wednesday and Thursday, doing their punch list to track the work finished and unfinished.

So we made our signs, put them in front of Arise, and waited for the city to come by.

On Wednesday, we spotted the folks in suits and orange vests on the sidewalk outside our office.  I went out to talk to them, and one turned out to be Al Chwalek.

"You're getting three trees," he said.  We're bricking the strip but we'll create three tree wells."

"Thank you very much!" I said, and we shook hands.  So it turned out our signs were unnecessary, and yet I knew that without the dozen phone calls,our strip would have remained treeless.

Last week I drove by the house where I lived for thirty years, owned by a slumlord who never maintained the house, and which eventually, after the chimney started to fall to pieces and the foundation began to crumble, I had to leave.  Someone-- and I think not the city-- had cut not only the junk trees, but also a magnificent maple tree, at least a hundred years old,  that had provided afternoon shade for my bedroom on hot summer days.  Only a ten foot trunk still remained standing.  It was heartbreaking.

Waiting for a Message

by Rochelle Mass

Trees help you see slices of sky between branches,
point to things you could never reach.
Trees help you watch the growing happen,
watch blossoms burst then dry,
see shade twist to the pace of a sun,
birds tear at unwilling seeds.

Trees take the eye to where it is,
where it was,
then over to distant hills,
faraway to other places and times,
long ago.

A tree is a lens,
a viewfinder, a window.
I wait below
for a message
of what is yet to come.

RARE: Portraits of America's Endangered Species

RARE from Joel Sartore on Vimeo.

Joel Sartore - read more about his book and how to purchase.

Liar, liar: 70,000 barrels a day, not 5,000, spilling into the gulf

Well, looks as if the Gulf oil spill is much larger than BP and the U.S. government want to admit-- closer to 70,000 barrels a day.  At the new numbers, the amount of oil is currently twice the amount of the Exxon Valdez. The spill is now the size of the state of Connecticut.

BP keeps saying that it's more important to stop the leak than to measure it.  But it's just not an either/or situation.

“If we are systematically underestimating the rate that’s being spilled, and we design a response capability based on that underestimate, then the next time we have an event of this magnitude, we are doomed to fail again,” said John Amos, the president of SkyTruth. “So it’s really important to get this number right.” New York Times

Apparently two scientists who know how to more accurately measure the flow of oil coming from the ocean floor were set to fly out to the site of the disaster at the invitation of BP-- but the invitation was canceled.

Meanwhile, BP has sprayed more than 500,000 gallons of dangerous dispersants on the oil leak.  This can't go on forever, seeing as BP has already purchased one-third of the world's supply of these chemicals.  An article in Scientific American says the chemicals will create their own set of environmental and health problems.  When weather conditions permit, BP is also burning the oil (see photo).  As I write this, BP is trying to sink a pipe which can siphon off the oil and load it into a tanker.  Don't hold your breathe--although if you live in New Orleans, you sure may feel like it. 


The Center for Biological Diversity has become one of environmental organizations that impresses me the most for their commitment and depth of strategy to preserve life on earth.  (That includes us, folks.)  Their page on the Gulf disaster is a great source of real information.  Check it out.