The Caste of Awareness.

While we were away, we were heroes, to people we met on the road, and to folks back home. People here and in other places across the country stated openly that they thought of us as doing this for all of them. They called us warriors, angels, knights.

Along the way, there was some sudden, sharp difference of opinion that caused some friendships to sever (all on facebook, and no huge losses – or surprises) but for the most part, there was either relatively sensible devil's advocacy or complete, enthusiastic support for what we have been trying to do. The bad stuff taught us lessons. The good stuff kept us going – has literally kept us both alive* – and I thank you all for it. As you read this, please remember that all of that is NOT forgotten, as I am obviously still here to write this side of it. <3

I've found that when you're in a tense, scary situation, you tend to make judgements quickly. It's important. A survivor would probably also learn to be flexible in their ideas and opinions, and learn to be a good judge, but humans are very flawed and the most difficult time to think and judge quickly is when you are in a tense, scary situation. So in other words, error happens. However, when you prove to people that they do have some control over their own personal margins of error, well, sometimes they don't like that.

You can change yourself. You can change the world around you. Not can, you DO. The breaths you take affect the air around you, every decision you make, your consumption, your waste, to the very cells flaking off of your skin affect the environment around you. And everything affects everything else. This isn't mysticism or god or aerie-faerie bullshit – this is basic, 3^rd grade science. If you learn to make conscious choices, you can have at least some say in the effect you have on things around you. But it's just easier for us to say 'That's just how it is.' and continue to destroy ourselves and each other. There are people out there who can see someone suffering and not care, but I don't want to know those people for any longer than it would take for me to be able to identify them again. There are also people (and I think this is most of us) who, if we are in a place where whatever is happening doesn't seem real, then we can convince ourselves that it's not happening up until the last possible second (or beyond in many cases*). I can understand not only the preference for that, but in some cases the effiency, but in THIS case, it is unforgivable and unacceptable.

We are in the midst of the worst disaster to ever hit America. When 911 happened, people came together like GANGBUSTERS! Stars, everyday Joes and Janes, Fire and Police Departments all over the country – all over the WORLD poured out love, prayer, support, donation, work. When we believed someone else had done this terrible thing to us, we were OUTRAGED. We still are, as the millions of dollars and manpower we're pumping into the Middle East proves.

Now, we are facing something unimaginably worse than that, something that we are in part, hugely responsible for ourselves, and all we can do is fight about it***. This one, we just don't seem to want to own, even though our own families, friends, neighbors and strangers just like us, with kids and pets and car payments are down there experiencing fear, doubt and suffering worse than they have ever known, and this is just the beginning of it. Where are the concerts, where are the stickers and waving flags and songs by Idols to raise money? Where is the heartwarming outreach? I guess it's busy. It has to take out the trash.

This is not one of those situations where we can tell ourselves that there is nothing we can do. At this point, it is morally wrong to do absolutely nothing, even if that thing is just doing your best to watch, limit and conserve the oil and oil-related products that you use and don't shop at companies who drill unsafely. Millions of good American people are going to be affected by this. Hundreds of thousands are already out of work because of this. Human death has occurred because of this, 13 so far, and sickness is beginning. I've heard a lot of people ask why we should worry about Haiti when there are bad things happening here. Where are those people now that your own good neighbors are in MAJOR trouble and it's our fault? Will you help now?

I can offer my yard for emergency evac camping. I can encourage the people I know to be aware of the REAL health hazards, possible dangers and need for a serious evac plan now. I can write to my representatives every day stressing how important it is that government health care, evac mobility and water and air testing plans be installed there NOW, and be working NOW and prepared for whatEVER.

I can raise money for the things I see that need it – Louisiana Bucket Brigade offers FREE buckets to communities who want to do their own air testing and someone has to pay for that. Perhaps we could help them raise enough money to fund that and do water testing as well. I can not let the unimportant bad stuff get to me (the important bad stuff, I just have to stay strong enough to live with), I can look for every possible opportunity to help, connect others who can help and need help, and I can pray.

I'm sad for the losses of friendship and understanding. It's hard to explain to people that you understand WHY they would want to be in denial or think this is all crazy, fictional media crap, or just flat-out not want to know. It makes it easier to understand why some of those closest to me are having the hardest time hearing me out – which, I have to tell you, really, really sucks – it's because they know me, and have some idea of how hard I can fight for something. I even understand why some friends have verbally attacked me. I know what fear and helplessness can do. But there is no way I can let any of that stop me, or even get to me too much. I am amazed at what seems important, or more precisely, at what seems Unimportant to me now.

I can say sincerely that I am sorry for the break in your regularly scheduled programming, at least as far as myself and my attitude and behavior are concerned. Believe me, I wish I was the same old me, talking about the same old stuff... but those days are over. And they're over for all of us, even if we don't know it yet.

I'll be here for you. And there are others too. Just say when you're ready.

*Not only in the sense of feeding and housing us, but in helping to beat back the terrible self-destructive depression that not only are all 3 of us (and how many more) prone to, but that ANY sane person could not avoid in the face of this disaster.

**DON'T SWIM IN THE WATER. HAVE AN EVAC PLAN. GET A VAPOR RESPIRATOR.

***and, to quote Amanda, “Use !@#$ing hair?!” to try to help. Where IS the !@#$ government support?!?!?! These are conservative Christians suffering and DYING down there! For YOUR SUV's OIL! Does it not count if they're Catholic?  

Home, but not really Here...

Last night, trying to cope with the normalcy of being home, trying to debrief a little, I was journaling and making notes and I started to write: 'I have just taken the most important step of my life.'

- meaning going down to the Gulf and coming to terms with the fact that I would be giving my life to this cause. But then I knew that wasn't true. Every step I have taken has been important. Everything I've ever done, everything I do, good and bad, minute or slightly less minute, has had SOME kind of impact on the world and on the lives and others. And I believe that the same is true about every living being on the planet. What will it take for us to become conscious of our impact?

If the horror of the disaster itself isn't enough, and the hell-visions spewed out by the media, desensitizing and agitating us endlessly aren't enough, if the fact that YOUR children or your FRIENDS children will bear the burden of all of our shared ignorance and greed isn't enough, or the fact that our economy is going to be shattered and ravaged beyond belief isn't enough, or the fact that our social system will not be able to cope with a toxic human disaster this big (and it IS toxic and it IS beyond most of our comprehension at this point, in the BEST case scenarios), then what WILL it take?

 [Ed - Three weeks ago, Enid Sisskin of the Pensacola area testified before the U.S. Congressional committee that just voted, with plenty of help from Jeff Miller and other Republican and some Democratic congressmen, to expose Pensacola Beach to off-shore Gulf drilling. Here is the full text of her prepared testimony, re-formatted for the web.]   - Reposted from the Pensacola Beach Blog

"HR 4761 unnecessarily complicates the existing state role, in fact, and entangles the Governor and the state legislature of a coastal state in an onerous and time-consuming process that repeatedly imposes an unnecessarily high burden of proof, and very tight deadlines that are unlikely to be achievable, upon the Governor and state legislature of each state."

-- Enid Sisskin, Ph.D., June 14, 2006

Drilling Rigs - Part 3:
"Unmanageable, Ill-Conceived, and Unnecessary"

Enid Sisskin, PhD
Director, Gulf Coast Environmental DefenseTestimony Before the
Committee on Resources
United States House of Representatives
Hearing on H. R. 4761
June 14, 2006
Minerals Management Service and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency documents acknowledge that the Gulf Coast and the Gulf of Mexico are already experiencing severe environmental stress, and have been for a number of years. Large areas experience over-enrichment, low dissolved oxygen, toxin and pesticide contamination, shellfish ground closures, and wetland loss.

Degradation of water quality is expected to continue due to contamination by discharges and spills, due to eutrophication of waterbodies, and due to hydrologic modification. Contamination coming from point and nonpoint sources and accidental spills entering the water system from rural and urban sources can be both localized and pervasive.

Sixteen-hundred contaminants have been measured in the Gulf's waters by USEPA. These contaminants include hazardous and toxic wastes, petroleum and petroleum products, pesticides, synthetic organic compounds such as dioxin, and metal and inorganic chemicals such as cadmium and mercury. The USEPA goes even further, saying:

"Water quality is deteriorating, seagrass beds are dying, fish stocks are declining, the numbers of sea turtles, marine mammals, and coastal birds are decreasing and coastal wetlands and estuaries are disappearing."

Another report, this one by the Center for Health and Global Environment, in 1998, also said that the Gulf of Mexico is more stressed than previously thought, and the health of the people and the economy of the coastal communities are at risk.

These declines are for the most part, caused by humans. In Environmental Impact Statements for lease sales and drilling permits, the MMS and USEPA admit concern about the long-term and regional effects of some of the wastes that would be discharged into the Gulf of Mexico by drilling rigs.

In spite of some of the testimony you’ve heard, drilling, whether for oil or natural gas is a dirty, polluting business. Each rig discharges drilling muds and cuttings and produced water, as well as producing trash. Again, according to the environmental documents, these waste discharges could affect biological communities by smothering living organisms or through toxicity, causing slow growth, decreased species abundance, or altered reproduction.

Specifically, discharged muds have been found to cause heavy metal, mercury and cadmium, sediment contamination. Documented biological effects on benthic organisms from drilling discharges include elimination and inhibited growth of seagrasses, declined abundance in species, altered community structure, and decreased coral coverage. Localized effects on benthic marine organisms in proximity to OCS drilling sites have been measured, causing altered community structure, and changes in abundance lasting for ten years, or in some cases, permanently.

Fish, marine mammals, sea turtles, and coastal and marine birds will be expected to be impacted by the drilling discharges, pollutants and trash from OCS operations. Any pollution in the effluent could poison and kill or debilitate these organisms and adversely affect the food chains and other key elements of the Gulf ecosystem. In the case of endangered sea turtles, any loss of individuals could impact species survival, again according to the USEPA. In addition, the actual burial of pipelines would probably cause irreversible structural impacts on the seafloor, particularly in areas where hard substrates would be encountered.

The cumulative impacts of the discharged muds and cuttings on the live bottoms of the Eastern Gulf would add to long-term regional offshore water quality degradation. USEPA estimates the annual discharge of contaminants in drilling muds and cuttings over the entire northern Gulf to be 748,000 tons.

The regional impacts of the discharged drilling muds and cuttings are unknown. According to the EPA, averaging estimates on annual inputs, drilling muds and cuttings and produced water discharges from the entire OCS oil industry would contribute about 1.65 billion pounds per year and 44 million pounds per year of contaminants. According to the EPA, full determination of long-term impacts can not be calculated.

Another potential impact is from spills. There’s a new urban myth – that there have not been any spills from drilling rigs in years. Unfortunately, that’s just not true. Just a year ago, almost to the day, a 560 gallon spill from an Amerada Hess drilling platform washed up on the Breton National Wildlife Refuge oiling more than 800 pelicans in the rookery and killing almost 500 of them.

According to the MMS, due to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, 113 drilling platforms were lost and 146 hurricane-related oil/condensate/chemical spills were reported, six of at least 1,000 barrels (42,000 gal) were identified, the largest being 3,625 barrels (152,250 gal). Based on historical spill events, it is expected that elevated concentrations of petroleum hydrocarbons measurable in the water column would be gone as early as 6 months after the spill event, but residual water quality effects could occur as long as two years after the spill.

If a spill were to reach our sugar white beaches, within a few months to 2 years after cleanup, although disturbed beach configuration would adjust to approximately predisturbance conditions, some oil that penetrated to depths beneath the reach of the cleanup methods would persist in beach sands and could be released periodically when storms and high tides resuspend or flush through beach sediments. During hot, sunny days, tarballs buried near the surface of the beach sand could liquefy and cause a seep to the sand surface.

Any further decrease in water quality, increase in trash, or oil spills will have catastrophic effects on our beaches and our economy, just recovering from the last two hurricane seasons. That’s why the Pensacola Beach Chamber of Commerce as well as 26 Florida cities and counties have all come out strongly against drilling. These cities and counties represent more than 8 million Floridians who are aware that our economy depends on a healthy environment.

The bill we are here to discuss will lead to significant adverse impacts to the coastal communities. For 25 years, the OCS Legislative Moratorium and the longstanding Presidential OCS Withdrawals, have protected the coasts. They represent a bipartisan, bicoastal consensus and provide the most important cornerstone of US coastal protection. The OCS Legislative Moratorium was once again included in the FY 07 White House Budget Document this January, continues to enjoy the support of the President, and was just sustained on the House floor last month.

HR 4761 would immediately rescind the Legislative OCS Moratorium nationwide, in all US coastal waters for both oil and gas drilling, and would reverse the Presidential OCS Withdrawals off of the Florida Gulf Coast. There is no justification, nor any public mandate, for this attack by HR 4761 on these popular protections for America's most sensitive coastal waters.

There is also no need to grant states any additional "veto authority" over the renewal of the Legislative OCS Moratorium each year beyond the clear existing ability that each state obviously already has to "opt-out" through the efforts of their own congressional delegation. The House delegation from any state could, right now, openly work to exempt their own state's coastline from continued protection in any given year.

HR 4761 permanently writes all Members of Congress out of the decision making process as to how, where, and when expanded offshore drilling takes place off of their state. HR 4761 unnecessarily complicates the existing state role, in fact, and entangles the Governor and the state legislature of a coastal state in an onerous and time-consuming process that repeatedly imposes an unnecessarily high burden of proof, and very tight deadlines that are unlikely to be achievable, upon the Governor and state legislature of each state.

State legislatures are not in session year-round in most states, making gaining concurrence at multiple junctures between a Governor and a state legislature unnecessarily complicated at best, and often virtually impossible. HR 4761 pits one state against adjacent states who may want to keep their coast and fisheries clean and unpolluted, and punishes states who choose to protect their coastal-dependent economies with continued legislative measures.

States rights are seriously eroded in other ways, as the siting of transportation corridors through state waters, for subsea pipelines or tankering of crude oil from offshore rigs, would be pre-empted by the federal government in provisions contained in HR 4761.

As previously stated, the EPA and MMS agree that coastal states that have long suffered damage to their coastal zone as a direct result of the adverse impacts of federal offshore oil and gas drilling have a legitimate right to receive a fair and equitable share of federal receipts derived from federal offshore lease bonus bids and rents and royalties. Scientific studies tell us that extraction of oil and gas has caused significant subsidence (sinking) of coastal wetlands along an extensive portion of the Gulf Coast. The oil industry has cut deep channels for pipelines and for drill barge and vessel access to wellheads and other petroleum facilities, while sequential tropical storms have further eroded important coastal wetlands by scouring out these dredged channels and thus made coastlines even more vulnerable to storm damage.

Money from the industrial activities that caused that damage should clearly be channeled to fix the damage; however, there is no legitimate justification for arbitrarily designing an allocation formula for directing federal OCS receipts to states in a manner that bribes states to accept new federal offshore drilling and more drilling closer to shore, or that punishes all states that make the legitimate choice to continue to protect their coasts from these same kinds of massive adverse impacts.

It is obvious that all federal OCS receipts directed to states and localities should be utilized to mitigate damage from OCS activities, not to construct additional damaging infrastructure to attract even more drilling or to build inappropriate and harmful projects that further degrade the coastal zone, so strong standards for the use of the money by states and localities is an absolute necessity, but is lacking in HR 4761.

What is being promoted as a new category of so-called "gas-only" offshore leasing is unmanageable and ill conceived, and HR 4761 grants undue discretion to the Secretary of the Interior in deciding what combination of gas and liquid gas condensate would be deemed a "gas-only" lease. To provide a Governor and a state legislature with only 180 days in which to react to an "accidental" discovery of crude oil on what was originally promoted as a natural gas lease, or else the "gas only" lease would automatically become an oil and gas lease, is simply not practical, when most state legislatures are not in session throughout the year.

Further, most of the adverse impacts of offshore gas drilling operations are virtually identical to offshore oil drilling operations, with the sole exception of the probability of creating a large oil spill. Liquid gas condensate is highly toxic to virtually all marine life on contact. Routine ocean dumping of spent drilling muds containing cadmium and mercury, random discharges of "produced waters" sometimes containing radium, and daily discharge of toxic hydrocarbons like benzene, toluene, and Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAH compounds) occurs from either gas rigs or oil rigs.

The worst part of this it is unnecessary when there are faster, cheaper and cleaner alternatives. Our country contains less than 5% of the world’s gas and oil reserves and uses 25% of the world’s petroleum. We cannot drill our way to energy independence. It’s only through conservation, increased efficiency, and use of a combination of alternative, renewable energy sources that we’ll ever be self sufficient.

Unfortunately, the routine water and air pollution and potential damage from spills and accidents don’t respect state boundaries. The Gulf is already stressed, and bringing rigs up to a line or an arbitrary distance on a map won’t stop damage that will be caused by drilling to Florida’s coastal communities.

The forecasters are predicting another decade of active hurricane seasons and we on the Gulf Coast, as well as communities along the East Coast, can expect storms with potentially severe damage to our environment and economies. We certainly don’t need to add the pollution from oil and gas operations to compound what nature will send us.