HANDS ACROSS THE SAND Part II, Audio

Source: Speak Up

Speakers: Jason Birmgham and Chuck Rolando

Standard: American Accent

INTERVIEW

IN DEEP WATER

      One of the most dramatic events this year has undoubtedly been the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, better known as the “BP oil disaster.”

      The spill lasted from April 20 to September 19. BP estimates its total cost to rectify the situation as $ 40 billion. According to Wikipedia, it is the largest marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry.”

      Not surprisingly, the disaster has given great impetus to the environmental movement and has made people think again about alternative energy sources. On June 26^th a series of events called “Hands Across the Sand” took part. They linked hands across beaches around the country in order to protest against offshore drilling.

      One person who was closely involved in the organization was John Weber, of an environment group, the Surfrider Foundation. He met with Speak Up on a rather noisy beach. As he explained, the Deepwater Horizon Spill is just one of many in a long line of American oil disasters.

John Weber

Standard: American Accent

In  1969 there was an oil spill in Santa Barbara, California and there were many dead seabirds and sea life and it was such that people in California could see the damage right in front of their eyes and many people think that that helped give rise to the modern environmental movement in the United State. So, after that, offshore oil drilling was questioned because in Santa Barbara that was a bad accident. So that was over 40 years ago and then. In 1989, we had the Exxon Valdez oil spill. An I haven’t been there myself, but people say you can go to Prince William Sound in Alaska and dig down a few inches in the dirt, or among the rocks, and there’s still oil there. And Exxon never properly cleaned up there, and they never properly compensated fishermen and people that made their living in such a way. Exxon neverspent more money fighting it in court, on lawyers, than it would have taken just to compensate people properly. 

HANDS ACROSS THE SAND

 
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 13^th 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 26^th (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

A total of 26 nations took part in the Hands Across the Sand protest in June 2010. The United States came first, with 826 events, while Canada managed 27 and Australia 10. Most other nations (such as Brazil, Colombia, Peru, South Africa, India and China, for example) organized two or three events each and the same was true of European nations. For more on Hands Across the Sand and the Deepwater disaster, visit: www.handsacrossthehand.com . www.surfrider.org . www.nottheanswer.org . http://oilspill.skytruth.org/