Is is any wonder that Laughingcat's
diary comes as no surprise to anyone who lives near a large body of water, or has even a passing interest in the health of our oceans? More confirmation of this
disgraceful, criminal negligence has been provided by the leaders of commissions to assess the health of our oceans and the policies affecting them. Say the commission members:
WASHINGTON Feb 2, 2006 -- Leaders of two expert commissions that spent years examining the nation's ocean policies give the Congress, Bush administration and governors a near-failing grade for not moving quickly enough to address hundreds of their recommendations.
The presidential panel chaired by James Watkins, a retired Navy admiral and former energy secretary, recommended in September 2004 creating a new trust fund, boosting research, improving fisheries management and consolidating federal oversight among 212 recommendations in its 610-page final report, the first federal review of ocean policy in 35 years.
The privately funded Pew Oceans Commission chaired by Leon Panetta, former President Clinton's White House chief of staff, reached many of the same conclusions a year earlier.
Now, members of the former commissions have joined forces, saying the government's "D+" effort so far could imperil the oceans' health and abundance if the problems are left untended much longer.
I ask again, is this any surprise? Is it any surprise that Bush's half-assed plan will include the conversion of oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico into open-ocean fish farms? Sounds good, right? But just read further and note that this is just a way to relieve the oil companies of responsibility of the negligence of deserting the platforms, all 3500 of them at sea:
There are an estimated 3,500 idle platforms in the Gulf -- and each one of them could be a candidate for a new lease on life as a fish farm.
"The oil companies are looking for a way of leaving platforms in place and delaying the disassembly and expensive process of dismantling and removing a platform," said George Chamberlain, president of the St. Louis-based Global Aquaculture Alliance.
It costs about $2 million to bring a platform ashore, Treece said, but another option, the "Rigs-to-Reefs" program converting a platform into an artificial reef, costs about $800,000. Chamberlain said the cost of production in fish farming continues to decline.
In addition to the problem of cost, consider how dirty the practice is:
Critics worry about turning the nation's oceans into the equivalent of ugly, dirty feedlots -- but for fish instead of cattle.
"It's much like chickens or hogs or other confined feeding operations on land and putting them in the ocean," said Roger Rufe, president of The Ocean Conservancy. "There are considerable issues with that, pollution issues."
Not to worry, Treece said, who believes the Gulf's strong currents "should take care of that," he said. "The solution to pollution is dilution, and that's what you got out here -- lots of dilution."
"We've found environmental impacts to be relatively minor," Rubino said. "You don't want to crowd these together and stick them on top of coral reefs."
He added: "This is a big coastline. We're not needing a lot of space."
Well, a lot of dilution is needed to combat the
hazardous, toxic waste that is poisoning us as well. This is exactly the short-sightedness that causes the negligence we are seeing in every aspect of this administration. Will we act before we realize that we have more room for dilution, no more fish to eat because they are all poisoned, as we are increasingly becoming?.
I hope that we as citizens can learn from the example set by the people of New York City, in their victory over the EPA and Christine Todd Whitman. Will New Orleans residents follow suit with their hazardous breathing conditions as well? What will it take? If it takes more lawsuits, then so be it.
What will it take for environmental justice?