Environment Forum
Global environmental challenges
Video: Dolphins swimming through crude
In this video blog posted by Regan Nelson, a senior oceans advocate with the Natural Resources Defence Council (NRDC), dolphins are shown swimming in the murky waters containing chemically-dispersed oil off the Gulf of Mexico.
BP engineers were using undersea robots on Friday to try to stem the continued leak of 5000 barrels of oil a day from the ruptured oil well about a mile underwater.
Wildlife rescue teams were on standby as potential calamity faces the region’s birds, sea turtles and marine mammals.
The BP oil spill is reported to be the latest in a string of environmental insults to the U.S. Gulf Coast, from wetlands eradication to flood control measures that have starved marshes of new sediment deposits.
from Photographers Blog:
Covering the Exxon Valdez disaster
It was shortly after midnight on March 24, 1989 that the Exxon Valdez hit Bligh Reef in Prince Edward Sound and began leaking millions of gallons of North Slope crude oil. I was sound asleep in Toronto, Canada when that happened.
Reuters was still taking a feed of pictures from UPI (United Press International) from the United States. But I remember hearing the news that morning and packing my gear (which at that time was film, powder chemicals, portable darkroom, 16S color transmitter and of course.. some cold weather clothing). I sat in Toronto as the politics of the news business played out in Washington between Reuters and UPI. Finally, it was decided that we would both cover the story. So, David Ake, a UPI staffer from Denver, and I made our way there. I remember landing in Anchorage, Alaska, and hauling my gear into a rental car at midnight, then driving six hours to Valdez in the dead of night. About 4 hours into the drive I was held up by a few hundred caribou, who decided to cross the two lane highway, they were just mingling so I still have vivid memories of being in the middle of nowhere honking my horn to help speed up the process.
Time to get un-addicted to oil
– Rona Fried, Ph.D., is CEO of SustainableBusiness.com, a news and networking site for green businesses: including a green jobs service and a green investing newsletter. Any views expressed here are her own. —
Over the past 30 years, four U.S. presidents chose to continue down the fossil fuel path of least resistance instead of investing heavily in energy efficiency and renewable energy – the only long-term solutions that can avoid catastrophic oil spills like the one we are witnessing today.
