Monthly Archive
 Courtesy of The New York Times |
As petroleum oozed onto the Gulf coast and oil spill rescue crews found the first greased birds, conservation groups shifted their response efforts into high gear while the White House announced a moratorium on new offshore drilling leases.
Birds, Sharks, Whales, Sea Turtles, and Other Wildlife Threatened By Oil Slick Nearing Coast
04/29/2010
Breton National Wildlife Refuge. Courtesy USFWS
[UPDATED, 4/30/2010] The oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico reportedly reached shore early Friday morning, and wildlife specialists are preparing for what the government is calling “a spill of national significance” that may reach the fragile Louisiana coast as early as Thursday night. Here’s a look at some of the birds and other wildlife experts are most concerned about.
 Kadashan River, Tongass National Forest, Alaska (Photo by John Schoen) |
Rosalie at 84, little me at 8. Photo of Edge by Margaret Raymond used with permission.
I was a kid when Rosalie Edge died in 1962, and although I never heard of her back then, the subsequent discovery that our lives overlapped for a decade gave me a feeling of immediacy. Imagine if you dare, that on my family’s frequent trips to New York City we passed Edge’s Fifth Avenue apartment house while she lived there!
Note: this is not Cape Wind.
President Obama’s promised winds of change seem to be picking up: Today, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar approved the nation’s first offshore wind farm, to be built in Nantucket Sound, off the coast of Cape Cod. The farm, called Cape Wind, marks a major step forward in the country’s effort to meet the challenges of a rapidly warming climate, and will set a precedent for other offshore wind projects.
This April 26, 2010 NASA satellite imagery shows the oil sheen leaking from the site of the Deepwater Horizon incident in the Gulf of Mexico. The sheen is approximately 600 miles in circumference and recovery. Imagery courtesy of NASA Earth
UPDATE (2pm, April 28): The Coast Guard will begin controlled burns today. Workboats will set up fire-resistant booms around segments of the slick, creating floating corrals before lighting "small, controlled burns" of several hundred gallons each that will last about an hour and will not be visible from shore, Reuters reports. AccuWeather forecasters say a shift in winds could push the spill to the Louisiana coast by this weekend.
A “controlled burn” might be the best technique for attacking the vast oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico that is now a mere 20 miles off the Louisiana coastline, officials said yesterday. The blaze could be set as early as today, if wind pushes the plume toward shore, CNN reports. The situation is dire: Cleanup efforts have mopped up 48,384 gallons of oily-water mixture, but 42,000 gallons of oil a day are seeping from a broken pipe 5,000 feet deep and experts say it could be weeks before they shut off the well. A burn poses far fewer threats to wildlife than if the oil were to reach land, according to NOAA.
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A composed and collected Lisa Jackson, the EPA Administrator, sat down for a chat with Jon Stewart, the host of “The Daily Show,” for an episode that that aired last night on Comedy Central in the wake of Republican Senator Lindsey Graham’s announcement that he might step away from climate bill negotiations.
Yesterday was supposed to see a highly anticipated bi-partisan climate and energy bill rolled out in the Senate. Instead, Democrats and the Obama administration went into damage-control mode after one of the bill’s three architects threatened to abandon negotiations. Now the prospects for the legislation, which had been murky, are even more uncertain.
