Broken planet

In news that never makes it to BigTV last week, BigOil is still polluting the Gulf of Mexico:

As Coast Guard crews were scouring the Louisiana coast looking for damage from Tropical Storm Karen this week, they made a startling discovery: A tar mat weighing 4,100 pounds, presumably remnants from the devastating BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010.

Not as impressive as the 40,000 pound mat they found earlier but the ongoing damage is adding up.

Mats and balls of tar have continued to wash up on gulf shores, despite the more than three years that have passed since a rig explosion left oil spewing into the gulf’s waters and spawned the worst environmental disaster in U.S.

But despite the lasting impact that BP’s oil spill has had on the region, the company discontinued its regular searches for remaining oil earlier this year.

Worse yet, nobody really seems to know what the long term damage will be:

The scope of damage from this tar isn’t entirely clear. What is known is that tar from the Deepwater spill contains the bacteria Vibrio vulnificus — which causes a deadly type of seafood contamination — at a rate 100 times higher than surrounding waters. On top of that, a combination of these tar balls and the dispersants that were used to clean up the spill can hold carcinogenic pollutants that are soaked up by human skin.

And after Fukishima, the Pacific is in even worse shape. Seriously, read this whole story of a man who sailed through thousand of miles of it. The ocean is broken:

"After we left Japan, it felt as if the ocean itself was dead," Macfadyen said.

"We hardly saw any living things. We saw one whale, sort of rolling helplessly on the surface with what looked like a big tumour on its head. It was pretty sickening.

"I've done a lot of miles on the ocean in my life and I'm used to seeing turtles, dolphins, sharks and big flurries of feeding birds. But this time, for 3000 nautical miles there was nothing alive to be seen."

In place of the missing life was garbage in astounding volumes.

Dangerous garbage at that. Big enough enough to sink small ships. We are literally killing this planet and nobody is reporting it with the urgency it deserves. [graphic via]