Rescue Helpless Oiled Wildlife Via Nonprofit Organizations

When there is a crisis, people pull together and can get a lot done. Here is how the common, everyday citizen can help with oil spill cleanup and the cleanup of the wildlife:

Donations to the following Wildlife Societies are incredibly useful for rescuing oil-soaked pelicans, sea turtles, and other wildlife contaminated and suffering from one more human-caused catastrophe:

1. National Audubon Society
2. National Wildlife Federation
3. Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences

Give the Governmental Leaders an Elementary Course in Physics with Your Letters:

Tell your leaders that offshore drilling is a bad idea and why. After the Gulf Oil spill, they ought not to be dense any more, but should hear what it has done to the people which they govern in terms of livelihood, loss of employment, loss of life, loss of industry. What if there is another oil spill? How will it be cleaned up? Press for safer cleanup methods. Which cleanup methods seem to be most effective? Which are least effective, and why? Why are they using ineffective methods? How long have they been drilling? How many spills have we had? When is government going to learn their lesson? Maybe when the common people rise up against this, all of us?

Governmental agencies ought to know better not to have an "In case a well breaks or blows up" plan B. It is plain and simple, a rule of physics - things break. It is also plain and simple - a rule of physics - what it shooting out with pressure must come up, and since oil and water don't mix, guess what, it will be at the top. Another rule of physics: water evaporation occurs from the top of the water, not the bottom of the ocean, so a huge oil spill could affect the weather patterns worldwide if it were big enough.

Moreover, another rule of physics, is that ocean life needs to come up to the surface to get air. Another rule of physics is that birds soaked in oil cannot fly. Another rule of physics is that oil can be absorbed into skin, whether it is your skin or a bird's skin. The birds are necessary for planetary ecology. They are not necessarily accompanying ocean life just to decorate it in an artsy manner. They are useful for keeping the ocean in balance. If the ocean did not possess creatures to keep it in balance, red algae and mineral imbalance would overtake the ocean, resulting in a dead ocean. Rachel Carson wrote an environmental book called "Silent Spring." Let's not have a silent ocean or we could have silent planet.

The laws of nature dictate that chemicals must be removed by the liver and the kidneys. Well, if too many chemicals are put into the body, whether it is a human body or a bird's body, the liver and kidneys can shut down. One could go on and on about the laws of physics, but someone ought to give the governmental leaders an elementary course in physics. There's something to be said for the Amish, who historically would have rather used horses and buggies rather than to use up and coming technology of cars, trucks, buses, and planes. They stayed on the ground. There is some merit to that. They didn't need an oil drilled from 1,000 feet below the ocean floor to put into a mechanical rig that moved them 5 to 10 miles down the road to someone else's farm or to the town. Certainly, things have changed in the last several hundred years, and definitely in this century, but would it be so bad to live 5 miles from a town, and have several neighbors within the distance a horse could be ridden?

The problem creating a demand for offshore drilling in the first place is employment. Employment seems to have taken a turn for the worse. People's jobs are less stable, and they could be terminated for having a bad day where they let a customer know how they feel about their rude behavior, but they must have a reliable vehicle to get to this job, minimum wage or not, and the oil from the bottom of the ocean product to put into the gas tank to get there.

This oil spill will be changing some things. Some people will choose no longer to go to work, but to sit at home on computer telecommuting. Others may "tune, turn on, and drop out," as the hippy culture from the 60's espoused.

It's easy to complain about offshore drilling, but how have you reduced your oil consumption? If you commute a long distance to your workplace, and are dependent on your job or you will lose your home, what can you do? Maybe you can participate in the creation of clean energy vehicles with ideas, contribute to public forums about clean energy vehicles. Where there is a will, there is a way.

Here are a few ways to reduce oil consumption:
Use alternative methods of transportation such as a bicycle, an electric vehicle, or when you repurchase your car, get a fuel efficient car. When possible, use public transportation, and also find a job closer to home, which also cuts commute time. For some people this may not be possible. But our combined need for fuel just to get to work has a greater impact on the planet as we all know. It goes much further now than air pollution, although that is tremendously important. Now our combined need for fuel to get to work can actually harm the ocean, by proxy, and the ocean is a huge part of planetary balance and ecology.

Here are a couple more ways to help:

Support EarthJustice and Greenpeace in their endeavor to tell leaders that arctic oil drilling is dangerous and more dangerous than Gulf oil drilling. EarthJustice's website: www.earthjustice.org. It's premise is that the earth needs a good lawyer. Here is a snippet from their website: "Help us protect wildlife and wild places and see your gift matched dollar-for-dollar - up to $100,000." Here is the website for Greenpeace: www.greenpeace.org.

Donate to the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF). There is a button called "Donate" right on their home page at www.edf.org. There is also a link on the home page "Take Action." Take action: Every voice counts. Tell your senator we must break our oil addiction.

Visit Natural Resources Defense Council - The Earth's Best Defense at www.nrdc.org. You can donate financial resources for wildlife cleanup. Their current endeavor is "Say No to Shell's Plan to Drill the Arctic. Take Action Now."

Here is the Whitehouse website so you can contact government about your concerns: http://www.whitehouse.gov/.