Gulf of Mexico oil slick.

I had dinner with mi madre last night after church, (this is a fairly regular occurance). Over dinner, we talked about lots of things. Our conversations generally end up migrating towards being healthy, eating right, and those kinds of things. Last night we touched on our recent eating habits, environmental law, (she is teaching a class on it at MSU today), an upcoming trip to Holiday World, my sister coming home, the food I was eating, how removed the everyday person is from what they eat, (Nobody in my life, with the exception of my mom, has any clue where their food comes from and what has been added, modified, taken away, etc. This soapbox will be saved for another post), and then finally our conversation migrated to the recent devistation in the gulf of mexico.

Just in case you weren't aware, a BP oil rig off the coast of Louisiana (approximatley worth 5 billion dollars), burned up last Tuesday after some oil drilling went a bit wrong. With the oil rig gone, over 5,000 barrels of oil have been pouring into the Gulf of Mexico daily since last Tuesday. This oil is practically as thick as roofing tar and is covering an area 74,000 km wide on top of the ocean. Because of this thick blanket of tar, TONS of oceanic wildlife are dying because of their inability to breath and their lack of sunlight. The oil slick is expanding so rapdily on a daily basis that the government made an agreement with BP to burn part of the slick yesterday, (Wednesday), so the oil would not leak into the environmental wetlands of Southern Louisiana, killing even more wildlife.

This devistating occurence will have no better outcome. This is a lose-lose situation. Either they burn up the entire oil slick sending unimaginable amounts of air pollution into our ozone, or they do not burn it and hundreds of miles of wetlands and wildlife are smothered in tar. Sad. Sad. Sad. Let's remember to keep all the leaders and decision-makers in our thoughts and prayers.