A bird is engulfed in toxic oil sludge at East Grand Terre Island along the Louisiana coast on June 3, 2010. Images are from AP photographer Charlie Riedel.
It seems that our nation will be scraping the putrid remnants of the Bush/Cheney administration off our shoes for many decades; not just in the form our tattered economy, torture and illegal wars, but also the horrific oil spill in the gulf.
Former head of Halliburton, Dick Cheney, is responsible for pushing hard to de-regulate our country’s oil industry, systematically dismantling safety rules, oversight and inspections, replacing regulatory officials with oil industry lobbyists and executives. This has led directly to the catastrophic situation now unfolding in the gulf coast. Larry Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s former Chief of Staff, put it simply:
Cheney destroyed the regulatory mechanisms in America…he put a 20 year veteran of lobbying for the oil industry in to the position overseeing essentially the regulation of offshore oil drilling and that sort of thing, the MMS…Cheney is responsible for what is happening in the Gulf, in my view, for two very distinct reasons…
oceans are oil-filled
is this our mass extinction?
choking on profit
If you are so inspired, please add your own haiku in the comments section.
About Rhonda Winter
Thanks for your article. Blame doesn’t seem to help the problem. Let’s get people to act. Talk is cheap. Talk of change is easy. There has been very little of it.
Please let me know if there is anything we can do at blogcatalog to rally bloggers around your efforts.
You know the real costs at stake here, for the people, for the wildlife and for the future of this planet.
Here’s a petition to get our government to act. They too have resources at their disposal. We went to the moon. Let’s “eliminate our use of fossil fuels.” That’s a worthy challenge to the people. See http://www.petition2congress.com/2/3283/the-gulf-enough-is-enough/
Bloggers are uniting at BlogCatalog.com for the Gulf at http://www.bloggersunite.org/event/bloggersunite-for-the-gulf
The Gulf as horrific as it is, is a warning. We need change. We cannot depend on buying or using fossil fuels. Either we will pay the price now or later.
And don’t think oil is the only culprit – gas is just as bad – and the way they extract it from the earth is diabolical!
Please, check out the interview on Fresh Air – http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127593937 – the gas companies pump millions of secret ingredients (diesel is one part) in to displace the held in rock… Cheney/Bush made sure the gas companies do not have to disclose what is pumped in (and never taken out) and that the process is no business of the EPA.
If ever there was an axis of evil it was Bush and Cheney.
Well said once again Doggift. Maybe it’s an “Axis of Ignorance and greed” – but we “mustn’t apportion blamw” – apparently that’s not the “dun thing” anymore !
Oil Spill Haiku
Pour oil into water
you’ll see they cannot mix
another Cheney trik
I complitly agree and think what has been hapining is compleatly unexeptable!! however how about chevron and what they are doing in Ecuador??