Dead baby dolphins are currently washing up along the Gulf coast.
But that hasn’t stopped the US government this week from issuing the first deep water drilling permit since the BP oil disaster.
And they’re considering plans from BP and Shell to drill in the remote, pristine waters of the Arctic Ocean.
The truth is that scientists cannot say yet whether the dead baby dolphins are due to the BP disaster. In fact, scientists cannot say much of anything about the impacts of the BP oil spill on the Gulf of Mexico and its marine life because hundreds of millions of dollars set aside for research is stalled in government bureaucracy and BP backpedaling.
Here’s what the science journal Nature recently had to say:
“A fund of half a billion dollars for research into the effects of last year’s massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has spent months mired in bureaucracy and political maneuvering, leaving scientists uncertain about how or when the money will be awarded.”
The money for independent scientific research must be released immediately so we can know the truth. The US government agency responsible for stewardship of the Gulf of Mexico ecosystem, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA), needs to step up and make sure this funding gets out the door now so scientists can independently investigate why baby dolphins are dying and look into all the other long-term impacts of the BP oil disaster.
Once we have collected 10,000 individual letters, I will personally deliver your message to NOAA to make sure Administrator Lubchenco receives it.
We’re just now starting to see the full impacts of last year’s spill. This isn’t going away. No matter how hard the government and BP try to make it.
