I’m on an incredible email list of passionate locals, and this was sent around, written by a woman named Cindy Cohn, and I just had to pass it on, as it’s a great wake-up-call of perspective on this spill:<\/p>\n
“I can’t help but point out that as much oil as is being spilled in the Gulf is spilled *every year* in Nigeria with no real efforts at cleanup or control.<\/p>\n
This oil spill is the worst in US history, but it’s not even close to the worst in the world. And we need to be careful that in our understandable upset about this at home we don’t increase the risk to people around the world — that this doesn’t result in increased and dangerous drilling overseas so that Americans just don’t see the devastation so close up.<\/strong>“<\/p>\n She then listed some excellent quotes & referenced articles on this enlightening perspective:<\/p>\n “One report, compiled by WWF UK, the World Conservation Union and representatives from the Nigerian federal government and the Nigerian Conservation Foundation, calculated in 2006 that up to 1.5m tons of oil \u2013 50 times the pollution unleashed in the Exxon Valdez tanker disaster in Alaska \u2013 has been spilled in the delta over the past half century. Last year Amnesty calculated that the equivalent of at least 9m barrels of oil was spilled and accused the oil companies of a human rights outrage.” —-<\/p>\n “We see frantic efforts being made to stop the spill in the US,” said Nnimmo Bassey, Nigerian head of Friends of the Earth International. “But in Nigeria, oil companies largely ignore their spills, cover them up and destroy people’s livelihood and environments.”<\/p>\n —-<\/p>\n ” The Associated Press reported that Shell alone spilled nearly 4.5 million gallons of oil into the Niger Delta last year.” – http:\/\/www.aolnews.com\/wor<\/span>ld\/article\/nigerian-oil-sp<\/span>ills-make-exxon-valdez-loo<\/span>k-like-drop-in-the-bucket\/<\/span>19483921<\/a><\/p>\n —-<\/p>\n “All oil comes from someone’s backyard, and when we don’t reduce the amount of oil we consume, and refuse to drill at home, we end up getting people to drill for us in Kazakhstan, Angola and Nigeria — places without America’s strong environmental safeguards or the resources to enforce them.” Thank you, Cindy… and to all of you on Deep’s awesome Social list!<\/p>\n How You Can Help<\/strong><\/p>\n From another email I received:<\/p>\n “It is becoming the nightmare of our worst fears. I know you are all concerned, indeed sickened and angered by the horrible travesty. The good folks at International Bird Rescue and Rehabilitation Center (IBRRC)<\/a> in Long Beach and Vacaville are leading the oiled bird rescue effort in Louisiana.<\/p>\n While those responsible for this well blow out are covering the cost of the Gulf of Mexico clean-up, you can support the ongoing work of the non-profit organizations currently on the ground preparing to respond to oiled wildlife. You can support International Bird Rescue’s ongoing programs to rescue and rehabilitate aquatic birds by donating, becoming a member or adopting a bird.”<\/p>\n IBRRC – http:\/\/www.ibrrc.org<\/a><\/p>\n PelicanNetwork – http:\/\/www.pelicannetwork.<\/span>net<\/a><\/p>\n UPDATE: I had this PBS Newshour widget with a live spillcam<\/a> with gallon ticker (ug, super sad) – on here, but realized today it a live UStream, so it starts autoplaying if you have my site up in the background somewhere. Woops! I highly recommend you check it out on this page<\/a>, though.<\/p>\n Thanks for reading & being concerned about this, not just in our country, but around the world. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’m on an incredible email list of passionate locals, and this was sent around, written by a woman named Cindy Cohn, and I just had to pass it on, as it’s a great wake-up-call of perspective on this spill: “I Read more…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[29],"tags":[208,69],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/2014.willolovesyou.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3363"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/2014.willolovesyou.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/2014.willolovesyou.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2014.willolovesyou.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2014.willolovesyou.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3363"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/2014.willolovesyou.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3363\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9554,"href":"https:\/\/2014.willolovesyou.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3363\/revisions\/9554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/2014.willolovesyou.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2014.willolovesyou.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2014.willolovesyou.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n– http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/<\/span>world\/2010\/may\/30\/oil-spil<\/span>ls-nigeria-niger-delta-she<\/span>ll<\/a><\/p>\n
\n– Lisa Margonelli, New America Foundation scholar (New York Times op-ed)<\/p>\n