Dear future generations

I'm so sorry that we let these people ruin our planet. I wish I knew how to stop them.

The news from the Gulf just gets more depressing. Even frightening. Today we learn of a new environmental threat.

More than 27,000 abandoned oil and gas wells lurk in the hard rock beneath the Gulf of Mexico, an environmental minefield that has been ignored for decades. No one — not industry, not government — is checking to see if they are leaking, an Associated Press investigation shows.

Circumstantial evidence indicates some at least probably are leaking already or could repressurize and blow their seals at any time. Meanwhile, an "all-star team of top oceanographers, chemists, engineers and other scientists" are ready and able to conduct an independent investigation on the effects of BP's big gusher and are not getting any support to do this critical study.

"In my mind the really important thing is where are the toxic components going, and what are they killing?" he said. What's coming out of the well is not one homogeneous substance, he explained. Some components of oil and gas are highly toxic and carcinogenic, while others are relatively benign, and the components react differently to the elements.

So some of the key questions, Leifer said, are: "Where in the water column are the more dangerous components of the oil going? And therefore what is the most likely effect going to be on the part of the ecosystem they are acting with? And if that part of the ecosystem is destroyed, is there a cascading effect?"

Important questions to answer, so why the delay? One might think that neither BP nor our government wants us to know the full extent of the probably irreparable damage to our ecosystem. I think I'm ready to start calling this criminal negligence by everyone involved.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]