The BP oil spill may mean that Florida’s Gulf Coast may never be the same again. I want to recount some of my memories from childhood.

Oil is nasty stuff. It is full of various toxic chemicals which you really don’t want to have on you, your wild life or your beaches. The question is, what do you do with it when you spill an estimated 5.16 million barrels (based on a 60K barrels per day) into an area where there are lots and lots of beaches for it was up on?

Sadly the main concept for dealing with spilled oil is to let it “weather” which means it breaks down into small droplets, gets eaten by bacteria and is generally sent to the bottom of the sea where we can’t see it so we don’t worry about it. This does nothing in terms of getting the toxic chemicals out of the water, but there is a hell of a lot of water in the oceans and there is toxic crap from other sources, so we don’t sweat it as much as we should.

"Originally posted at Squarestate.net"

But for all the vintage ‘70’s tech that we use to try to keep the oil off the beaches, some of it does reach the shore. It is in the form or tar balls and so-called mousse (an oil sea water emulsion). When that happens you can’t just leave it there, like on the ocean floor, after all there is a tourist industry to consider (as well as wild life refuges, critical habitat and productive fishing grounds close to shore). At this point you have to go and collect that oily waste, then what happens to it?

Weekly Mulch: Kicking Our Addiction to AC—Why DC Needs to Step Up

by Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger

This summer, Americans are cranking up their air conditioning. At the same time, Senators are letting climate legislation cool its heels in Washington. Ultimately, both of these summer trends are contributing to climate change. Air conditioning dumps greenhouse gases into the environment, and without climate legislation that caps the country’s carbon emissions, America’s share of global carbon levels will only continue to grow.

Man, I hope this works! I don’t want another couple of months of oil in the Gulf of Mexico while relief wells are dug.

“BP has either been blocking blood panels or they have been taking blood panels and not letting really anyone see what the blood panel works look like.”

— Riki Ott the marine biologist and author of Not One Drop: Betrayal and Courage in the Wake of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill on Virtually Speaking July 8, 2010/

Gulf Coast law firms filing a series of civil RICO actions in Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama against BP.

In America, wind turbines echo the almost melodic taunt of a schoolyard victor — Neh-neh-neh-neh-neh-neh: You can’t get me. That’s because American wind turbines are the manifestation of freedom from foreign oil. The more American wind turbines, the fewer barrels of oil America must import to meet its energy needs. And American-built wind turbines help propel the nation out of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression by generating good-paying American jobs.

News media focused too much on how good a speech Obama gave and not on what he actually said.

It’s time to bring BP to justice. Take action to revoke BP’s corporate charter today.

I just received several emails from FDL diarist Marta Evry, who’s making her way from Pensacola, Florida to New Orleans as we speak. She took some photos along the drive. Commentary and photos below are hers. – MW<