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Tar
balls in Texas
Now all Gulf states are tainted
a bucket's worth of tar balls that washed onto a pair of Texas beaches means the crude has arrived in every Gulf state.
Oil is still on
the move, but the fleet of skimmers tapped to clean the worst-hit areas
of the Gulf of Mexico is not.
A string of storms has made the water too choppy for the boats to
operate for more than a week off Florida,
Alabama and Mississippi, even though the gusher continues.
The number of tar
balls discovered in Texas is tiny compared to what has coated beaches
in other Gulf states.
Still, it provoked the quick dispatch of cleaning crews and a vow that
BP PLC will pay for the trouble.
"Any Texas shores
impacted by the Deepwater spill will be cleaned up quickly and BP will
be picking up the tab,"
Texas Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson said in a news release.
The oil's arrival
in Texas was predicted Friday by an analysis from the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric
Administration, which gave a 40 percent chance of crude reaching the
area.
"It was just a
matter of time that some of the oil would find its way to Texas," said
Hans Graber, a marine physicist
at the University of Miami and co-director of the Center for
Southeastern Tropical Advanced Remote Sensing.
About five gallons
of tar balls were found Saturday on the Bolivar Peninsula, northeast of
Galveston,
said Capt. Marcus Woodring, the Coast Guard commander for the
Houston/Galveston sector.
Two gallons were found Sunday on the peninsula and Galveston Island.
When Reagan crashed the economy in the Eighties (all you ever hear is
how great RR's economy was)
Dan Rather did as story about how great the economy of Oklahoma was so
people flocked here for jobs.
But then our economy crashed, too,
and believe it or not, Tulsa made the decision to get more diversity
in our economic pie and that decision is helping us thru tough times
like right now.
The Gulf states need to do the same
thing - they can't stay married to
dirty, slimy, life-killing oil.
If anyone in America had any brains (Should I bother to finish that sentence?)
they would use
this opportunity to get into wind and solar because oil is the past and
clean energy is the future.
We know there are billionaires sitting on thousands of
pounds of hundred dollar bills - doing what?
They need to invest in America
and they might - if we had some leadership at the top.
Obama should be offering every homeowner an 80% tax
credit for solar panels on your roof.
That would create a shitload of manufacturing and installation jobs
that will be good for decades
plus it would reduce the demand for electricity - but we're not going
to do that because it's the right thing to do.
Sometimes I think America would rather sit there and say "We're fucked"
instead of getting off our asses and moving towards a solution to our
problems.
When will Obama come to work and lead our country out of
this Bush disaster?