By now you’ve either seen Paul Horsmans’ blog or read the news on the latest study showing about 80% of the oil from BP’s Deepwater Horizon disaster is unaccounted for contradicting the White House’s rose garden view of what happened.
It doesn’t seem hard to decide who to believe given the billion dollar oily question of lawsuits, elections, policy, accountability and corporate profits versus those who just want to find the truth. So while I was deciding which way to chop carrots today on the Arctic Sunrise, do I go julienne or straight up octagons (not that it matters cause I’m not sure what julienne means, it’s just that Willy asked me to cut them that way), my thoughts drifted off to the importance of independent science.
After eight years of the Bush administration dealing with climate change by “studying it” and decades of energy policy progress being put off by “further studies needed” and who knows how many times important decisions have been avoided by “needing to better to understand” our problems I wonder what more is it going to take? My home state, Michigan, just had it’s own oil spill damn it! Nearly a million gallons and all that Enbridge can do is lay some boom and buy out houses nearby.
On this Gulf of Mexico expedition we aim to bring in more evidence to combat the industry and government lies of we can’t, we need, it’ll cost us. We can convert to renewable energy, we don’t need the fossil fuels, and it’s costing us more in lives, environmental damage and wars than we can calculate. I saw some of the first evidence of oil reaching the beaches off Southern Pass near Venice, LA in April, a dolphin with oil on it’s dorsal fin along Barataria pass in May (can’t forget that), and a crab about the same time on the beach of Grand Terre Isle presenting me with the independent truth. So far on the Arctic Sunrise I’ve seen what might be possible to still save. Dolphins, huge schools of fish, turtles, and of course people enjoying being. How’s that for independent science?
