I've been watching the updates about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and honestly, it breaks my heart. The people who were interviewed seemed so beaten up and broken, their lively hoods had been destroyed by something they could not foresee or prevent.

The news of this oil spill also makes me very, very angry. Angry at the complete lack of responsibility of a company so driven by greed that they were willing to cut corners on safety. Oil has been coming out into the water for about 40 days now. 40 days. They haven't fixed it and honestly, I'm not even sure if they themselves know how to:

"This scares everybody, the fact that we can't make this well stop flowing, the fact that we haven't succeeded so far," BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles told the media Saturday. "Many of the things we're trying have been done on the surface before, but have never been tried at 5,000 feet."

Wow, maybe if they had taken the time before to make sure everything was working properly this would not be a problem. The damage to the environment is astronomical. Ecosystems are very sensitive, the smallest changes can destroy them sometimes permanently. With oil going in the water, going into marshes, and washing up on shores; the environment is taking a major beating. The area the oil spewing out encompasses is huge:

The oil spill forms a surface slick at least 130 miles long and 70 miles wide that stretches from about 30 miles west of the Mississippi River to the offshore waters of western Florida, according to the latest National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration estimates.

I think how can it come back from that and I hope it can be restored. I don't want to have to tell my children someday, "Oh there were these wonderful and unique ecosystems in southern America but greedy idiots completely destroyed them and now you just have these pictures on wikipedia, just pretend it's the real thing."

I don't understand how people can be so consumed in their greed and the addiction to money that they become blind to something that is now causing serious environmental repercussions from the smallest microbes to birds to sharks to people. It makes me so livid, money is not worth destroying the only planet we have to live on. I am so disgusted.

While researching this oil spill I came across a silver lining, there are hundreds of programs devoted to helping clean up the massive amounts of oil across the Gulf. One program is called Hair for Oil Spills Program and it was created by Matters of Trust. This is a program to collect hair from people or animals and the hair is used to make hair booms which can then soak up water. They also use nylon which can be donated as well. I think this is such a unique program I had to share! Here is the link: http://www.matteroftrust.org/programs/hairmatsinfo.html

Here is a great youtube put out by Matter of Trust that better explains: Matter of Trust

cheers.

Jordan