“If you talk about the sky falling too early, then people stop buying Louisiana oysters, blue crabs, and shrimp,” says LSU environmental scientist. We’re expected to believe the rate of the BP oil spill has only been deduced by hobbyists looking at foreign satellite images. At a possible 25,000 barrels a day, they calculate the Exxon Valdez benchmark has already been surpassed. The EPA has a site to crowdsource concern, while US space images are embargoed because damage control to consumer confidence is more important than protecting nature. Alas for those sardonic Gulf-is-half-empty types, the Deepwater Horizon oil missed the half already decimated by hypoxia.
Not My Tribe
The Myth of Middle Ground
Maybe LSU ought to take any money they have invested in Oil stocks, divest it and use the money to (Figuratively) Build an ark.
Since the oysters, shrimp and crabs are currently in hatch stage, can’t-see-it-with-the-naked-eye, looks-like-cloudy-water stage, they should be out scooping up as much of that and the other plankton to raise in vitro. The Gulf Shrimp aren’t exactly a thriving species anymore, one year the fisheries people from Mexico to Florida were scared they had gone extinct from over-harvesting.
Whatever other plankton hovering in the water with them is endangered too, how in the Hell would they know which exact species of algae and which bacteria are endangered? We hear a lot about whales, dolphins, polar bears, tigers, top predators, in danger of extinction. Not so much about microbial life, which feeds the rest of us at the most basic level.
Methinks LSU’s Board of Regents ought to start thinking along those lines, they get somewhat less than half their funding from the Petrochemical industry, and what does that leave? Fisheries, mostly.
Big Oil like to believe they own Louisiana (and Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Texas, Mexico…) to the exclusion of all else.
But you can’t eat oil.
OOOO… they’re harvesting as much of the adult shrimp as possible before it gets worse. Short term v. Long Term profit.
Meanwhile, in the past year the Oil and Coal industries have been bombarding America with very expensive Television commercials and somewhat less expensive radio commercials against new regulations and against conservation and against actually funding the development of other sources of Energy (Solar leaps to mind)
The most heavily subsidized industry in the World telling the least subsidized to “sink or swim, ‘free’ Market rules!”
By a quick calculation they’ve spent more than a $1.2 Billion in Colorado alone on their advertising, not FOR their products but AGAINST any regulation or cut in subsidies to their industry.
That amounts to 6,000 dollars per Colorado Resident. Hell, in Alaska they at least give the money directly to the people. Not nearly as much as the long term cost the People are going to have to bear, but the symbolism is important.
And it keeps the people thinking in Short Term mode.
If the shrimpers make enough of a harvest before the SHTF they might have a regular year worth of take home pay. Next year, eh…
The oil industry have once more taken a big stinky doo-doo in our collective mess kit.