To me, no place was more beautiful.
But the last time I visited, roughly seven years ago, I vowed to never return. Why? Because the once lovely view was scarred by oil rigs just off shore. I decided to preserve my fond childhood memories and find a new beach.
Now look what Gulf Shores is threatened with:
Oil gushed into the Gulf of Mexico unabated Saturday, and officials conveyed little hope that the flow could be contained soon, forcing towns along the Gulf Coast to brace for what is increasingly understood to be an imminent environmental disaster.The spill, emanating from a pipe 50 miles offshore and 5,000 feet underwater, was creeping into Louisiana’s fragile coastal wetlands as strong winds and rough waters hampered cleanup efforts. Officials said the oil could hit the shores of Mississippi and Alabama as soon as Monday.
Many variables will dictate just how devastating this slick will ultimately be to the ecosystem, including whether it takes days or months to seal the leaking oil well and whether winds keep blowing the oil ashore. But what is terrifying everyone from bird watchers to the state officials charged with rebuilding the natural protections of this coast is that it now seems possible that a massive influx of oil could overwhelm and kill off the grasses that knit the ecosystem together.
Healthy wetlands would have some natural ability to cope with an oil slick, said Denise Reed, interim director of the Pontchartrain Institute for Environmental Sciences at the University of New Orleans. “The trouble with our marshes is they’re already stressed, they’re already hanging by a fingernail,” she said.
It is possible, she said, that the wetlands’ “tolerance for oil has been compromised.” If so, she said, that could be “the straw that broke the camel’s back.”
Read the rest of this New York Times article, by Leslie Kaufman and Campbell Robertson, here.
Not only are off-shore drilling platforms an eyesore, they’re hazardous to everything that breathes. And, as communities along the Gulf Coast can attest, when things go wrong, local economies can be destroyed.
We don’t want this nightmare here. Just say no to oil drilling off the coast of North Carolina. Contact your representatives in Raleigh. Make your next car an electric car or a hybrid. (I bought a Ford Fusion Hybrid this year.) Drive less. Walk more. Use less plastic — it’s made from petroleum products after all.
In fact, click here for a list of a few of the things made using oil for evidence of society’s full-on addiction to crude.
Voting with your dollars is one of the most powerful things you can do to pry America’s claws off the oil teet.
This article appears in Apr 27 – May 3, 2010.
Frank just doesn’t get it. There’s no comparing a city with a pristine coastline. I too grew up in Alabama. My family’s ritual summer visits to the gulf shores in Alabama and the Florida panhandle were simply magical. Looking out to the horizon and imagining what was on the other side fed my child’s imagination. There were no oil rigs, just a vista of possibility.
And how dare Frank say you are blind to “the facts of life”? You are looking at those facts, and feeling their implications. Lovely and very sad post.
I will stop buying that stuff when you do. How exactly do you write your blog? On a computer mayber? You are a bad person for using plastics.
I like the fake fur. I guess us Canadians need to keep killing the cute baby seals so that you don’t have to use that evil fake fur.