Source: Speak Up
THE ENVIRONMENT HANDS ACROSS THE SAND
The Deepwater Horizon oil spill, better known as the “BP oil disaster,” has been a dramatic reminder of the high environment coast of our dependence on oil. The explosion – and first spill – took place in April, and wasn’t completely sealed until September, allowing roughly 4.4 million barrels of oil to escape into the ocean.
FATHER AND SON
Yet American citizens were aware of the threat posed by oil long before the Deepwater disaster. The first moratorium on offshore drilling become law in the early 1980s and, after the Exxon Valdez disaster of 1989. President George W. Bush began to relax it. It was expected that Barack Obama would have a different approach but he also seemed to support offshore drilling. Local state governments were similarity on favor. This was certainly the case in Florida, and one resident, Dave Rauschckolb, was particularly angry about this. Rauschckolb describes himself as “a surfer and owner of there restaurants on the beach in Seaside, Florida” and he came up with the idea of organizing a protest. On February 13th of last year (two months before the “BP Oil Spill”) thousands of Floridians linked hands on beaches around their state in order to “project” it against offshore drilling. The “Hands Across the Sand” movement was born.
ACROSS THE NATION
The Deepwater oil rig explosion (in which 11 people died) and its dramatic ecological impact on the Gulf Coast shoreline increased awareness of the whole energy question. The Hands Across the Sand group therefore decided to organize more protests in the United States and around the world on June 26th (2010). John Weber who like Dave Rauschkolb, is also a member of another environmental campaign, Surfrider, says that “it ended up having almost 900 different events around the world and at least 100.000 people participated in the United States.”
THE NATION
Yet the horrors of the Deepwater disaster haven’t yet convinced all Americans that they need to think again about ht energy. Sarah Palin, the controversial former Governor of Alaska (the state where the Exxon Valdez spill took place), continues to chant “Drill, Baby, Drill!” but at least President Obama appears to have understood the problem, even if John Weber describes his position as “disappointing.”
AROUND THE WORLD
