British Petroleum has handed us all a unique opportunity in the Gulf of Mexico !

All the oil you can drink..free of charge !

While this is not a laughing matter...I believe a sense of humor is a tool we all need to get us through some tough times.

With that in mind I urge my readers to download, print and share some graphics I made today.

Other clean up methods include a mandate that anyone who collects oil from the surface of the Gulf or it's shorelines can demand that BP refine it to gas or diesel fuel at no cost and return it to those who collect the oil in the form of credits for fuel purchases anywhere in the US !

Okay enough of satire. What can happen and what can we do about it?

Government, for all it's efforts is not the expert at solving this problem. We are at the mercy of oil companies to resolve the immediate problem of cutting off the flow of oil. Others can work on methods to best clean up the mess while doing the least additional harm to the environment.

At this point I don't care who is to blame...there is adequate blame to go around. I am not one who is willing to jump on a media or right-wing ( or left-wing ) campaign to lay blame at Obama's feet. He inherited a mess at MMS and perhaps was slow to fix that mess. But at the time he took office he inherited a nightmare of vast proportions regarding wars, economy and health care etc. One must list priorities and absent an imminent catastrophe in MMS I am sure it was one thing that was on the long list of chores. Running this country is complex beyond human imagination. Keep in mind that MMS and the last administration were run by oil men!

One of the worst case scenarios (written by geologist Chris Landau on OpEd News ) I have seen claim this could result in Armageddon. If the oil is being produced currently through chemical processes as opposed to being fossil oil, if may never be stopped and we can look forward to the death of the Gulf and, perhaps, all our oceans. We get the majority of our oxygen from aquatic plants...we would suffocate...the end of civilization and most if not all animal life on Earth.

I don't know about this because I don't have the educational background or inside information to understand if this is possible or if so, what the chances of this are. But it points out the fact that we may be playing with dangers that outweigh our need for oil.

We lived for millions of years with no cars, no electricity, no oil etc. Lived off the land. It has been only in our recent history that oil has meant anything at all to humans. But one thing we always had and always required was the air we breath and the water we drink. If we are willing to risk our very life for energy, we are not being very smart.

At the least we risk passing terrible problems to our own children if we don't work to solve them now. Can you live with that?

BP can...because their "future" is related to profits not to people.

Smarter people than I have to figure out how to (a) stop the leak and (b) clean up the mess and (c) get us away from using oil.

We as citizens of this great nation and of the world must DEMAND that our elected officials place our future safety ahead of their political squabbling and profit driven motives.

Selected books on the Gulf Spill and Oil vs Environment on Amazon

Reading on Oil and Environment

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This article also appears on my Re Elect No One page.